From 23ac9f57b9b4c761cb8edc5bfa0c0de77ec89326 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Silvio Rhatto Date: Sat, 30 Sep 2017 14:06:22 -0300 Subject: Change extension to .md --- books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.md | 137 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 137 insertions(+) create mode 100644 books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.md (limited to 'books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.md') diff --git a/books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.md b/books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4089a7e --- /dev/null +++ b/books/tecnopolitica/cathedral-bazaar.md @@ -0,0 +1,137 @@ +[[!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 + +* Linus Law: "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (page 30); + "debugging is parallelizable" (page 32). + +* Delphi Effect: "the averaged opinion of a mass of equally expert (or equally + ignorant) observers is quite a bit more reliable a predictor than the opinion + of a single randomly chosen observer" (page 31). + +* Brooks Law: "complexity and communication costs of a project rise with the + square number of developers" (pages 32, 49). + +## Freedom and hierarchy + +* Kropotkin is cited at page 52: "principle of understanding" versus the + "principle of command". + +* Visão libertariana: "The Linux world behaves in many respects like a free + market or an ecology, a collection of selfish agents attempting to maximize + utility, which in the process produces a self-correcting spontaneous order + more elaborate and efficient than any amount of central planning could have + achieved." (page 52). Logo em seguida ele nega a existência de um autruísmo + puro. + +## Economics + +A very liberal point of view: + +* Homesteading the Noosphere: "customs that regulate the ownership and control + of open-source software [...] imply an underlying theory of property rights + homologous to the Lockean theory of land tenure" (65). + +* Open Source as a gift economy like a reputation game (81 - 83): + + Most ways humans have of organizing are adaptations to scarcity + and want. Each way carries with it different ways of gaining social status. + + The simples way is the _command hierarchy_ [where] scarce goods are allocated + by onde central authority and backed up by force. Command hierarchies scale + very poorly; they become increasingly inefficient as they get larger. + + [...] + + Our society is predominantly an exchange economy. This is a sofisticated + adaptation to scarcity that, unlike the command model, scales quite well. + Allocation of scarce goods is done in a decentralized way through trade + and voluntary coopreation. + + [...] + + Gift cultures are adaptations not to scarcity but to abundance. They arise + in populations that do not have significant material scarcity problems + with survival goods. + + [...] + + Abundance makes command relationships difficult to sustain and exchange + relationships an almost pointless game. In gift cultures, social status + is determined not by what you control but by _what you give away_. + + -- 80-81 + +He also explains that the reputation game is not the only drive in the +bazaar-style ecosystem: satisfation, love, the "joy of craftsmanship" are also +motivations for software development (pages 82-83), which is compatible +with the gift economy model: + + How can one maximize quality if there is no metric for quality? + If scarcity economics doesn't operate, what metrics are available + besides peer evaluation? + + Other respondents related peer-esteem rewards and the joy of hacking + to the levels above subsistence needs in Abraham Maslow's well-known + '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 -- cgit v1.2.3