

A Generation Lost in the Bazaar - ColinWright
https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2349257

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Roritharr
Google Cached Version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MiLg6t5...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:MiLg6t5kKcoJ:https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm%3Fid%3D2349257&hl=de&gl=de&strip=1)

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Tharkun
PHK makes a thoughtful point. But I don't know where to go from there. What
are the alternatives to the Bazaar? We have two cathedral builders (MS &
Apple) who have both built very large cathedrals with very tall walls around
them. If you want to get in, you have to pay up. And then you have to obey by
their rules. And don't even think about watching porn inside the cathedral.

Do we need another cathedral? Or a cleaner bazaar? Or something else entirely?
We ought to be careful not to throw out the baby with the (admittedly dirty)
bathwater.

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alayne
Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8812724](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8812724)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407188)

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ColinWright
Useful to see those previous discussions - thanks. There are lots of useful
points made there, and yet _still_ no concrete suggestions as to how to make
progress. Quite a few people agreed there's a problem, some saying it doesn't
matter, others believing it's inevitable.

Is it a problem?

If so, can it be fixed?

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Tharkun
I suppose there are two discussions ... the low level technical one wrt
libraries & static linking. And the high level, philosophical one, about
cathedrals vs bazaars...

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wglb
I have seen this before, and very much enjoy reading it again.

One nit is _paint company Mark Williams._ is not true. Mark Williams Company
was first Mark Williams Chemical company, marketing a drink called Dr. Enuf
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Enuf](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Enuf))

EDIT: There is some very lively discussion here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407188),
some fraction of which is a flame war, but includes some responses from phk
himself.

(pre-1990 myself. By an embarrasing margin)

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Beltiras
Crops up once in a while. Thesis has some merits but ESR's bazaar is more akin
to what is happening in web development today rather than at the OS level.
Code reuse is really frequent with many package managers for many frameworks.
You can start gluing software projects together with pip, npm, gems or
whichever gizmo your stack-of-choice presents you with.

I can make whole products just with pip install and editing settings.py.

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hackaflocka
I've often wondered what "an order of magnitude" meant exactly.

The author defines it as 100% (larger, in this case). Is that correct?

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thesnider
It's change by 10X, typically.

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hackaflocka
You're right, that's how he got 10,000% -- 10x and then another 10x . I
thought he had done 100% times 100%...

Thanks for the reply.

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sudioStudio64
This was great.

