Subject: Re: NetBSD: Certified mom-ready.
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
From: Mirian Crzig Lennox <lennox@alcita.com>
List: netbsd-advocacy
Date: 04/20/1999 01:53:55
Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU> writes:
> I hate to be insulting, but, "please pay attention."  Charles was
> directly addressing what you wrote, arguing that the Linux development
> community operates in many ways more like a cathedral than a bazaar.
> He was not arguing about general merits.

Ahh.  Well, in that case he's just wrong.

Of his three points, the only one which is actually useful in
establishing a trend either way is his claim that "if an net driver
was't written by Donald Becker, it doesn't go in."  If that were true,
it would be a strong argument that Linux really is cathedral like.
But it isn't; a look through the copyrights in the source code reveals
dozens of names.  Furthermore the concept of "goes in" is much fuzzier
in Linux than it is in NetBSD; there are alternative development
branches and alternative patch collections (some even archived on the
same server as the main kernels).  So, while it may be possible to
find isolated examples where the bazaar model doesn't seem to apply in
Linux, in broad strokes it is bazaar to a fault.

-- 
Mirian Crzig Lennox                                Systems Anarchist
  "Don't follow leaders... watch the parking meters."  --Bob Dylan