[jballanc]

It's a reference to Eric S. Raymond's famous article "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", where he compares the rather top-down, leader driven culture of Unix development to the free-for-all style of Linux.

Of course, I always like to point out the foolishness of this metaphor: Bazaars in the Near East were usually run in a fairly regimented fashion by merchant guilds and their elected or appointed leaders.

[chongli]

I don’t see how it’s foolish. When you mention a bazaar essentially no one thinks of the closed door meetings of the merchant guilds. Instead, they think of the hustle and bustle of a busy marketplace where all manner of goods, services, and ideas are openly exchanged.

This in contrast to the somber atmosphere of a cathedral where people whisper even when there are no services taking place at the time. It’s an image of reverence, humility, and monumental architecture.

[jballanc]

Yeah, "foolish" maybe wasn't the right word. All metaphors fall short in some way (hence why they're metaphors). I just, knowing something of the history of that part of the world, like to use the opportunity to share the knowledge that, despite the appearances of a chaotic, random aggregation of humans, Bazaars often had a significant structure under the surface (perhaps another lesson about open source to be had there).

[aidenn0]

> ...where he compares the rather top-down, leader driven culture of Unix development to the free-for-all style of Linux.

The Cathedral example was actually GNU, which is Not Unix (it's in the name!).

[jballanc]

Shoot, you're absolutely right! It's been a long while since I last re-read the article, and I had forgotten how "targeted" (for lack of a better term) it was at certain specific individuals.