Origins

A famous essay written by Eric Steven Raymond, a controversial figure in the Open Source world ,in 1997. It this essay that put him on the map, and started the critisism of self-aggrandisement, as he comments on Open Source, but does not create much code. After The Cathedral and the Bazaar he started the Jargon File, or The New Hackers Dictionary.

Fetchmail against Linux

The Cathedral and The Bazaar looked at two different Open Source projects - Fetchmail and Linux - and their two differeing systems of development. Fetchmail worked on a traditional software development model where only a few developers could see and access the developmental source code - The Cathedral. Linux worked in a more open method, where anyone could see and propose changes to the source code - The Bazaar.

The exams

Though examining two Open Source projects the common view is that the essay is comparing Open Souce against Closed Source. There is a valid reason for this in that private software companies all used the Cathedral style for building their products at that time.

Reciprocal relations by law

It was The Cathedral and The Bazaar where Linus' Law was first proposed - Given anough eyeballs all bugs are shallow. This law hypothesises that with enough beta-testers and enough co-developers examining the code then any problems can be easily and quickly catagorised and the solution will be obvious to someone.

The Bazaar turns in to an enterprise

Since the essay was written Open Source has expanded into big business. It could be argued that this essay was one of the main prompts of this sea-change, though the continual evolution of several Open Source projects into enterprise viable form would be more of a factor. It was, however, influential in the bazaarification of many Open Source projects and the move of Netscape into Open Source - and so the development of Mozilla

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