Cathedrals, Bazaars and the Town Council (fwd)

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This article was once posted here before (when blinux-develop shined up)
But since at this time most of you were still unsubscribed, I'm reposting
it because a developer should IMHO know it. 

--Hans
maintainer blinux-lists


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Cathedrals, Bazaars and the Town Council. 

These are some of my thoughts on the Bazaar model that I 
figure are worth sharing. Its also a guide to how to 
completely screw up a free software project. I've picked a 
classic example of what I think is best dubbed the "Town 
Council" effect (although town councillors may think 
otherwise).

There are certain things you have to understand about 
software developers. The first thing to understand is that 
really good programmers are relatively unusual. Not only 
that but the difference between a true "real programmer" 
and the masses is significantly greater than that between 
"great" and "average" in many other professions. Studies 
have quoted 30 to 1 differences in productivity between the 
best and the rest.

Secondly you need to understand that a lot of the wannabe 
real programmers are very good at having opinions. Many of 
them also catch buzzword disease or have some speciality 
they consider the "one true path". On the Internet talk is 
cheap.

The third part of any software project is what we shall 
call "the masses". They range between people who don't 
program but contribute massively in other areas - 
documentation, helping users and artwork to the sort of 
people that are often used to argue that you should require 
a license to connect to the Internet.

The project I'm going to take as an example of how to screw 
up completely is the Linux 8086 project. Porting a subset 
of Linux to the 8086 is one of the worlds more pointless 
exercises on the whole, and something that started as a 
joke and got out of hand.

There are a very small number of real programmers with the 
time and the right (or is that wrong) kind of mental state 
to contribute to a project whose sole real worth is "Hack 
Value". As a result of this at any given time the project 
has two or three core contributing people.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people who think it would 
be neat to run Linux on an 8086 who feel obliged to "take 
part". Most of them in this case are in the "wannabe 
programmer" category as the masses spotted the "silly" 
factor of the project from a safe distance.

The problem that started to arise was the arrival of a lot 
of (mostly well meaning) and dangerously half clued people 
with opinions - not code, opinions. They knew enough to 
know how it should be written but most of them couldn't 
write "hello world" in C. So they argue for weeks about it 
and they vote about what compiler to use and whether to 
write one - a year after the project started using a 
perfectly adequate compiler. They were busy debating how to 
generate large model binaries while ignoring the kernel 
swapper design.

Linux 8086 went on, the real developers have many of the 
other list members in their kill files so they can 
communicate via the list and there are simply too many half 
clued people milling around. It ceased to be a bazaar model 
and turns into a core team, which to a lot of people is a 
polite word for a clique. It is an inevitable defensive 
position in the circumstances.

In the Linux case the user/programmer base grew slowly and 
it grew from a background group of people who did 
contribute code and either had a basis in the original 
Minix hacking community or learned a few things the hard 
way reboot by reboot. As the project grew people who would 
have turned into "The committee for the administration of 
the structural planning of the Linux kernel" instead got 
dropped in an environment where they were expected to 
deliver and where failure wasn't seen as a problem. To 
quote Linus "show me the source".

If someone got stuck they posted questions and there was 
and is a sufficiently large base that someone normally has 
both the time and the knowledge to reply. In the Linux8086 
case the developers had long since walled themselves off. 
Given a better ratio of active programmers to potentially 
useful wannabe programmers would have rapidly turned some 
of the noise into productivity. The project would have 
gained more useful programmers and they in turn would have 
taught others. As with any learning exercise you are better 
off having only a few trainees.

There is an assumption some people make that you can't turn 
the "lesser programmers" into real programmers. From 
personal experience in the Linux project there are plenty 
of people who given a little help and a bit of confidence 
boosting will become one with the best. There are many who 
won't but enough that will. [1]

The Linux 8086 project has mostly recovered from its 
'infestation' and is now a small quiet project, using CVS 
trees and led by Alastair Riddoch who has been doing a 
sterling job. With the town councillors De-camped its now 
possible to ask questions, join in and help the project.

The lessons from this project, and others that went the 
same way (and sometimes died - remember the earlier Linux 
word processor projects) are fairly clear:

 * Release code right from the start. It doesn't matter if 
its not very useful. The best way to sort a town council is 
to simply do the job then tell them it has been done. 
Linux, KDE and GNOME have all taken this attitude and all 
done well from it. You can argue about the right way to 
program for a lifetime. Once there is code out there people 
(whatever their skill) can play with it. 

* Appreciate there  are people who with a bit of help will 
contribute very much  to a project. If their first patches
 are buggy don't put them down, explain why there is a 
problem and suggest solutions or places to look for examples 
of solutions. Every minute spent answering real questions 
helping someone work on a project will be paid back ten-fold 
to the project, and incalculably to society. 

* Don't forget non programmers. I find it sad that many people 
when asked "name the most important five Linux kernel people" 
rarely name some of the most important folk of all - the all 
to forgotten people who maintain web sites, change logs, 
mailing lists and documentation are as important.

 Linus says "Show me the code". That is a narrow view of a 
real project. When you hear "I'd love to help but I can't 
program", you hear a documenter. When they say "But English 
is not my first language" you have a documenter and 
translator for another language. 

* Try and separate useful people from the noise. It is hard to 
separate people trying  to help from a mass of pointless discussion 
and in the  Linux 8086 case I definitely did the wrong thing by 
giving up on that goal. How to remove just those who talk and do 
not do anything is a research topic 8).

So next time someone wants to vote on a project, or discuss 
issues for a month and then implement it - be warned. They 
may end up with the right solution. The odds are however in 
your favour for carrying on regardless. Just ask them to 
send you a patch when it works.

Beware "We should", extend a hand to "How do I"...

Alan

[1] As an example of this claim the original author of the 
Linux IPv6 code used to sit on irc from Portugal playing 
with a few basic ideas and asking questions. After we 
helped him figure some of the kernel internals he wrote 
probably 75% of the Linux IPv6 stack and was last seen 
working in the USA for cisco. 





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