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diff --git a/books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.mdwn b/books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.mdwn index 5e36e99..4089a7e 100644 --- a/books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.mdwn +++ b/books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.mdwn @@ -1,7 +1,10 @@ [[!meta title="The Cathedral & The Bazaar"]] [[!tag jogo software foss economics]] +* [The Cathedral and the Bazaar](http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/) * Author: Eric S. Raymond +* ISBN: 978-0-596-00108-7 +* Publisher: O'Reilly ## Phenomenology @@ -79,3 +82,56 @@ with the gift economy model: 'hierachy of values' model of human motivation. -- 82-83 + +Cites both Ayn Rand and Nietzsche at page 88 when talking about "selfless" +motives, besides their "whatever other failings", saying that both +are "desconstructing" 'altruism' into unacknowledged kinds of self-interest. + +## The value of humility + + Furthermore, past bugs are not automatically held against a developer; the fact + that a bug has been fixed is generally considered more importante than the fact + that one used to be there. As one respontend observed, one can gain status by + fixing 'Emacs bugs', but not by fixing 'Richard Stallman's bugs' -- and it + would be considered extremely bad form to criticie Stallman for _old_ Emacs + bugs that have since been fixed. + + This makes an interesting contrast with many parts of academia, in which + trashing putatively defective work by others is an important mode of gaining + reputation. In the hacker culture, such behavior is rather heavily tabooed -- + so heavily, in fact, that the absence of such behavior did no present itself to + me as a datum until that one respondent with an unusual perdpective pointed it + out nearly a full year after this essay was first published! + + The taboo against attacks on competence (not shared with academia) is even more + revealing than the (shared) taboo on posturing, because we can relate it to a + difference between academia and hackerdom in their communications and support + structures. + + The hacker culture's medium of gifting is intangible, its communications + channels are poor at expressing emotional nuance, and face-to-face contact + among its members is the exception rather than the rule. This gives it a lower + tolerance of noise than most other gift cultures, and goes a long way to + explain both the taboo against posturing and the taboo against attacks on + competence. Any significant incidence of flames over hackers' competence would + intolerably disrupt the culture's reputation scoreboard. + + -- 90-91 + +What about Linus behavior, then? + + The same vulnerability to noise explains the model of public humility required + of the hacker community's tribal elders. They must be seen to be free of boast + and posturing so the taboo against dangerous noise will hold. + + Talking softly is also functional if one aspires to be a maintainer of a + successful project; one must convince the community that one has good + judgement, because most of the maintainer's job is going to be judging other + people's code. Who would be inclined to contribute work to someone who clearly + can't judge the quality of their own code, or whose behavior suggests they will + attempt to unfairly hog the reputation return from the project? Potential + contributors want project leaders with enough humility and class to be able to + to say, when objectively appropriate, ``Yes, that does work better than my + version, I'll use it''—and to give credit where credit is due. + + -- 91 |