The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Raymond

The Cathedral and the Bazaar was the second non-fiction book I read of my own conscious choice. It was also my first formal introduction to several concepts that I had taken for granted. This was my first "Of Course!" book.
The main idea of the Essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar (which is contained in and the focus of the book), is about the differences of a centralized system of software development, versus a decentralized system. The Cathedral is built and maintained by a small number of elite priests, where the Bazaar is built and maintained by everyone with an interest. This idea of centralized vs. decentralized didn't quite do the trick for me with Raymond. It wasn't until I read Resnick (whose enthusiasm has enough subtlety that it was truly contagious) that I internalized the ideas. But it Was Raymond who planted the seeds.
Homesteading the Noosphere had a much more immediate reaction from me. In the essay, Raymond spoke of Gift Economies. He spoke of them in the context of open-source software development, but I recognized the idea in the Internet Community, and later in Information Culture at large. He explained the exchange of contribution and clout, which is the same exchange that I saw happening and took part in in internet communities.
How to Become a Hacker taught me a lot about myself in that it described ideas that made me say "Wait, aren't these givens?" Not so much with the specifics of Hackerdom, but the general principals. Raymond didn't treat these as givens, and so I started to look for the people who did not hold The Hacker Attitude close to their hearts. I found them. A few of them. More, I found their tracks. My living, biological grandmother is the closest and most clear example I found. Perhaps clearer than I wanted. Their tracks I found (big surprise) in the standard, base premises that Education is built on.
My grandmother's sole purpose on this planet, it seems to me, is to be stable. To be Normal. And thereafter keep her head down. I start pulling my hair out and twitching in frustration or horror (or some mix of the two) whenever I'm around that side of the family. I did worse than twitch and pull my hair out while I was in school.

Rules of the Hacker Attitude, as put by Raymond:

1. The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved.
School seems to ignore the positive attitude of this, eliminating the words fascinating and waiting. They take the joy out of it.

2. Nobody should have to solve a problem twice.
School acts on the premise that this is Exactly how we learn. Which is actually a valid argument. The more times you repeat something, the better you know it.
An argument for another time.

This means that
3. Boredom and drudgery are Evil
is fundamentally incorrect. Boredom and drudgery may not be the most fun, but they are a necessary part of learning.

4. Freedom is Good
Of Course! Freedom is a Wonderful, Natural, Righteous thing.
And, of course, Everyone knows what freedom is. It's Freedom.
*shudder*

5. Attitude is no substitute for Competence.
I think this is the only one that school might make a good argument for agreeing with. Though again, the definitions of both Attitude and Competence might vary to the extreme.

Is it any wonder I didn't get along with school? The values that I took for granted were almost opposite the values of school.


I picked up this book because of this, which appropriately lists The Cathedral and the Bazaar as a "hacker manual" (and I guess the author decided to promote some science fiction novels to fill out his list), but with an Inappropriate notion of "Hacker". I'm still not sure if I believe this was a joke or not, but it did make me pick up The Cathedral and the Bazaar when I saw it.