The Cathedral and the Bizarre

Cute title. But wow, this guy apparently does not live in the same universe as, I think, the rest of us.

I hadn't read ESRs paper in a few years, but just reread it again now. This author is definitely oversimplifying and mischaracterizing it. It's not right to conflate "Cathedral" with "Closed-Source" and "Commercial", nor to incorrectly imply that's what ESRs paper point was. Plenty of earlier Open Source software, notably FSF software itself, is (or was) developed "Cathedral" style and ESR definitely talks about that. I always read his paper as kind of "GNU FSF" process vs. "Linux", both being Open Source (or Free to please RMS). And I think history has proven his points rather nicely, IMHO.

But "Cathedral" and "Bazaar" are just two points on a spectrum anyway, and it's mostly orthogonal to a "Free/Open" vs. "Closed/Commercial" spectrum.

Now to the rest of the paper, while couched in formal and civil language, the author would have been much more succinct if he just came right out and said "Open Source Software Sux!". Which is an odd point to make for an academic having little experience writing either or any kind of real software.

I can see he thinks that, but there's not much in the way of actual arguments, other than opinions and cherry-picked sentences from ESR's paper, to make it worth picking apart or disagreeing with.

So yup, I fully agree: Dr Mark Tarver thinks that "Open Source Sux because Reasons".

Now then, I will just be getting back to the universe in which I live, where Open Source software is the foundation of the internet and just about every other piece of modern technology from doorbells to cars, including nearly all proprietary commercial products too...

> There are many people getting great benefit from Amazon other than bezos. Including many of people employed there

https://www.google.com/search?q=amazon+warehouse+workers

ESR is the truth while this shill’s critique of the open source model is both incorrect and a waste of time.

I skimmed these responses, I'd say that most of them are the result of not reading the material in the essay or nit-picking or ad hominem remarks. I really tried to find something of real worth.

'His argument rests on the claim that "most open source code is poor or unusable." When most people refer to Open Source Software, they're referring to serious projects like the Linux kernel, Apache, PostreSQL, Firefox, etc. They're not referring to random crap on Github.

I'm afraid this in an attempt to redefine open source and is an example of the 'isolated points fallacy' covered in the essay. Open source includes everything with an open source license. To say OS is successful by defining all projects that do not succeed as not part of OS is simply to coin a tautology.

'Is there any special reason to believe that closed source is any better? If we can count the sea of abandonware on Github, then we get to count the mountain of "interesting" code that remains internal to large companies, or worse, the stuff that actually got released on unsuspecting customers.'

Again covered in the essay

'Proprietary software vendors typically make money by producing software that people want to use. This is a strong incentive to make it more usable. (It doesn’t always work: for example, Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe software sometimes becomes worse but remains dominant through network effects. But it works most of the time.)

With volunteer projects, though, any incentive is much weaker. The number of users rarely makes any financial difference to developers, and with freely redistributable software, it’s near-impossible to count users anyway. There are other incentives — impressing future employers, or getting your software included in a popular OS — but they’re rather oblique.'

What an absurd dichotomy. Even if you work full time on open source, you probably can't be a major contributor to more than a handful of large projects, at most; many people specialize in just one. But you probably use dozens to hundreds of open source programs. So for any project with a modicum of popularity, of course the number of people who use the software without contributing dwarfs the number of contributors. That would be true even if everyone worked full time on open source.

A giver is a person who gives as much or more than he takes. A taker is one who takes more than he gives. Define it in relation to open source as a whole and the dichotomy is valid. There are users and corporations who take far more from OS collectively than they give back. Is this hard to grasp?

'The vast majority of comments that take issue with it in this thread thus far are nitpicks about minor points, and almost none address the essential thrusts of Tarver’s argument, all of which are actually quite cogent.'

That's basically right and that's why after 20 years the OS movement is still stuck where ESR left it.

Yes. But they give me a regular paycheck and extremely generous vacation and sick days, and nobody else I've interviewed with or been contacted by recruiters for can match those benefits... so I stay. At least until my RSUs vest.