The Cathedral, the Bazaar, and the Winchester Mystery House
4 points by mpweiher
4 points by mpweiher
The Cathedral model is carefully planned, closed-source, and managed by an exclusive team of developers.
(emphasis in original)
This is a common misconception. The "cathedral" in ESR's essay wasn't proprietary closed source, it was the GNU project.
"open source, closed contribution"
SQLite is an example of a cathedral-style development we're probably all familiar with.
The misconception is particularly unfortunate in the case of this article too.
The main experiments I've seen to combat the current state of things all seem to be inching towards a cathedral-style model. Vouch and invite systems in particular, but also moving to less popular platforms or increasing hurdles and skepticism towards new contributors. Even Github adding the ability to disable PRs (mentioned in the article) is largely defensive, fortifying your cathedral's walls.
It seems a shame that the logical outcome of that path isn't really considered.
Any open system can have a spam problem. Email is basically a walled fortress now, because the spam issue threatened to drown the system entirely.
A pull request used to spam-resistant. GenAI changed that. The reaction is predictable.
it was also a way to squeeze libertarian far-right ideology into the FOSS discourse. The Cathedral is an allegory of the State while the Baazar is the individualistic utopian lawless world white suprematist libertarians like ESR dream of.