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A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

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Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#201

Post by flatline3 »

Sharlin wrote: post #11
mikecane wrote: post #3

I'm not a coder. And that piece illustrates why Maemo went nowhere with the general public and why Nokia's Internet Tablets failed. I tried to download software only to find out they required "dependencies." Then I had to chase those down. And once I did, I found the software to be buggy and unreliable -- and that's why people go buy iPads. They don't want to jump through so many hoops to get so little. The journey i…

That's why you need a curated package repository. I don't have to even know that "dependencies" exist to use Debian or Ubuntu; the package manager is nice enough to inform me that it determined that these-and-these other packages are required to install the package I wanted, and that it's now going to automatically install them for me, but that's just details that could be easily abstracted out.

Curated package repositories are just a band-aid on the disaster. They improve things by centralizing the ridiculous and unnecessary cost of dealing with the mess.

It would be better to simply not have that cost.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#202

Post by jballanc »

flatline3 wrote: post #188
jballanc wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First: Have you ever looked at a plot of people for/against mariage rights for gays vs age? I suspect that the clear divergence does exist, but may not mean what you think it means... Second: I worked on OS X. In fact, I worked on Snow Leopard, and the start of Lion. What's interesting about that, is that Snow Leopard was the last version of OS X developed according to the "Cathedral" model. Also, while the Snow Leop…

I also worked on OS X, and I think you're misinterpreting "Cathedral" vs "Bazaar", especially given your later definition: > The only thing that distinguishes the Cathedral and the Bazaar is whether or not there is one single individual in whose head the only valid vision of the completed project exists. Core OS and related groups has long consisted of VERY different teams each working in their own fiefdoms with thei…

My point is that ideas flowed as often from "the bottom up" as from "the top down". Yes, there was a vision of the product held by those in charge, but there was also a thriving ecosystem of ideas. Some of the most successful engineers I knew at Apple made a habit of developing things they thought were amazing and should be included in the product. These were not components that were part of the original design.

The point is that, if one of the workers building the Notre Dame had gotten hot after a day of work and said "You know what we should include here? A swimming pool!" well...he probably would've been committed.

Coherent vision and a priori design are not the same thing. Apple has coherent vision. Bazaars can have coherent vision (should have coherent vision if they hope to be successful). But that's not the same thing as a Cathedral's a priori design...

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#203

Post by rbanffy »

papsosouid wrote: post #161
rbanffy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The expression "a complete OS" is not what it used to mean. Are you implying FreeBSD has an X server, a dozen compilers and interpreters, a GUI and other components equally "designed and built" as a cohesive thing?

No, I am implying that those things aren't part of the OS. You can tell, because they aren't part of the OS, they are installed with the 3rd party package management tools. In linux there is no base OS, everything is 3rd party packages. There is no difference between firefox and ls. In BSDs there is, ls is not 3rd party software packaged up to be installed, it is part of the OS, written by, maintained by, documented…

I would suspect GNU ls is more a part of a Debian install than, say, Gnome desktop. While not as clear-cut as in the BSD world, it's still the same idea.

Except that GNU ls was not designed to run on top of the Linux kernel, which is, on my book, a feature rather than, as you imply, a bug.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#204

Post by rbanffy »

recoiledsnake wrote: post #157
toyg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much all your arguments about the Cathedral model being superior fail in the face of the most common cathedrals known to man: Microsoft Windows and Office. Their inscrutable beauty is buried under tons of libraries nobody will ever touch for fear of breaking 20 years of development efforts, exactly like what happens in the Unix world. Their move to the 64-bit world was painfully slower than what their fellow m…

>Pretty much all your arguments about the Cathedral model being superior fail in the face of the most common cathedrals known to man: Microsoft Windows and Office. It's been twelve long years that OpenOffice moved from the cathedral model to the bazaar model. And it still suffers from the same criticisms you level against Office and more.

Do you think turning a cathedral into a bazaar is a minor architectural change?

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#205

Post by btrask »

jballanc wrote: post #151
thebooktocome wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to phkamp, iOS is a cathedral kind of project. I was hoping someone would bring up OS X and how horrible its cathedral-born API became around 10.5, but I was born in '85 and therefore have no right to speak in this thread.

While Apple would certainly like you to believe that the image of iOS sprang, fully-formed, from the mind of Steve Jobs like some sort of medieval cathedral, the reality is anything but. In fact, much of Apple's success is due to the extent to which it functions like a confederation of very well funded startups. Cupertino is very much a bazaar, wherein a shopper with very refined tastes (Jobs, for example) can pick a…

Can I, the customer, pick and choose the finest wares? If not, it's not a bazaar.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#206

Post by flatline3 »

jballanc wrote: post #202
flatline3 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also worked on OS X, and I think you're misinterpreting "Cathedral" vs "Bazaar", especially given your later definition: > The only thing that distinguishes the Cathedral and the Bazaar is whether or not there is one single individual in whose head the only valid vision of the completed project exists. Core OS and related groups has long consisted of VERY different teams each working in their own fiefdoms with thei…

My point is that ideas flowed as often from "the bottom up" as from "the top down". Yes, there was a vision of the product held by those in charge, but there was also a thriving ecosystem of ideas. Some of the most successful engineers I knew at Apple made a habit of developing things they thought were amazing and should be included in the product. These were not components that were part of the original design. The…

> Coherent vision and a priori design are not the same thing. Apple has coherent vision. Bazaars can have coherent vision (should have coherent vision if they hope to be successful). But that's not the same thing as a Cathedral's a priori design...

A priori design can adapt to new ideas. I'd argue that's what Apple did/does, in many cases.

Likewise, I'd argue that the truly ad-hoc bazaar development is responsible for some of the worst ideas and bad code that can be found at Apple.

The historical lack of good centralized vision on aspects of the Core OS -- such as Objective-C -- has led to staggering missteps and ridiculous inefficiencies on behalf of both the framework and compiler teams. This has been to nobody's benefit and the sum result is clearly inferior to better-designed language work done elsewhere (eg, MS).

Likewise, the ability for applications teams to drive forward ill-conceived OS and framework hacks has led to some terrible long-lasting implementation failures, which is something a coherent top-down vision could have prevented.

However, the fact is that products can succeed despite of their poor implementation. Costs may be higher, bug counts may be higher, and user satisfaction may be lower, but that hasn't always stopped Apple from building successful products. Where I take umbrage is in the notion that there's a dichotomy -- either you do things poorly and let intellectual lazy engineers take the lead, or your product does not succeed. That's not accurate.

I don't think Apple is a good case study for your point.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#207

Post by rbanffy »

pmjordan wrote: post #194
rbanffy wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm just reminding ourselves we don't know what you'll need in the future, that any decisions we make now are subject to change down the road and that it's foolish to assume we can design now what we'll be using ten years from now.

That's just defeatism, not arguing against cathedral-style development. Just because we're likely to be wrong to some degree doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be as close to right as possible. Anyway, I get the impression that for the original example of libtool, cathedral vs bazaar is the wrong question to be asking. [1] The problem isn't one of design or implementation. It seems a problem of distribution. I posit yo…

> Just because we're likely to be wrong to some degree doesn't mean we shouldn't try to be as close to right as possible.

Of course not! We should try to get as much of what we are doing right. We also must realize we are not as clever as we think we are (or would like to be). Cathedrals are monuments to imaginary deities. As such, they aren't subject to the laws of reality. Our efforts should, OTOH, be guided by what's real and measurable and take into account that what we "know" but can't measure is nothing more than an educated guess.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#208

Post by jballanc »

ori_b wrote: post #187
jballanc wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Apple would certainly like you to believe that the image of iOS sprang, fully-formed, from the mind of Steve Jobs like some sort of medieval cathedral, the reality is anything but. In fact, much of Apple's success is due to the extent to which it functions like a confederation of very well funded startups. Cupertino is very much a bazaar, wherein a shopper with very refined tastes (Jobs, for example) can pick a…

I'm going to drop the cathedral and bazaar analogy, because I don't feel like debating the exact meaning of the terms. It seems to me that quality is about having someone on the top who is willing to give direction and vision to a project, instead of having every person who scratches their own itch full influence. Contributors are great. But letting everyone pull in their own direction doesn't lead to something that…

The problem is that coherent vision and a prior design are NOT equivalent. Obviously, I cannot know what was going through the head of ESR when he wrote the original essay, but what I've always taken from it is that a priori design is inherently inflexible, prone to becoming disconnected from reality, and ultimately less inviting to creativity.

If the suggestion of the article is that the only way to retain quality is to move back to the "single vision" world of a priori design, I'm sorry...that ship has sailed, the cat is out of the bag...whatever your favorite analogy, PHK is very right that the new generation has gotten used to not having instructions handed to them.

Of course, anyone is free to start a project with a single vision, recruit new members, and do their best to grow the project. I suspect, however, that such an effort would loose out to one that figures out how to develop a coherent vision without the need for a priori design.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#209

Post by papsosouid »

rbanffy wrote: post #203
papsosouid wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I am implying that those things aren't part of the OS. You can tell, because they aren't part of the OS, they are installed with the 3rd party package management tools. In linux there is no base OS, everything is 3rd party packages. There is no difference between firefox and ls. In BSDs there is, ls is not 3rd party software packaged up to be installed, it is part of the OS, written by, maintained by, documented…

I would suspect GNU ls is more a part of a Debian install than, say, Gnome desktop. While not as clear-cut as in the BSD world, it's still the same idea. Except that GNU ls was not designed to run on top of the Linux kernel, which is, on my book, a feature rather than, as you imply, a bug.

The only thing keeping ls on your debian system is other packages having a dependency on it. There is no distinction between operating system and 3rd party packages, all of it is 3rd party packages. I have no idea where you are getting this weird notion about ls and where it was designed to run being a bug. I simply corrected an erroneous statement about what makes up a BSD operating system.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#210

Post by rbanffy »

papsosouid wrote: post #209
rbanffy wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would suspect GNU ls is more a part of a Debian install than, say, Gnome desktop. While not as clear-cut as in the BSD world, it's still the same idea. Except that GNU ls was not designed to run on top of the Linux kernel, which is, on my book, a feature rather than, as you imply, a bug.

The only thing keeping ls on your debian system is other packages having a dependency on it. There is no distinction between operating system and 3rd party packages, all of it is 3rd party packages. I have no idea where you are getting this weird notion about ls and where it was designed to run being a bug. I simply corrected an erroneous statement about what makes up a BSD operating system.

Why would it make a difference whether ls is part of the operating system or not? It works.

And if, next week, I write a better ls, I can install it and use it.

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