Today s Lecture Discuss other papers that resulted from the Cathedral and the Bazaar Lecture 29 Comments on The Cathedral and the Bazaar Kenneth M Anderson Foundations of Software Engineering CSCI 5828 Spring Semester 2000 May 2 2000 The size of a Bazaar Project In order for a bug to be reported Defines the terms total size actual number of participants effective size it must be reachable it must be triggered it must be noticed it must be reported Cavalier claims that the effective size of a bazaar project decreases for each condition This is important since it implies that bazaar projects may require large effective sizes number of participants contributing to a particular activity effective power effective size average contribution person hours week Kenneth M Anderson 2000 2 Size implications on Debugging Forrest J Cavalier III What a Name May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 3 May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 4 Evolvable Systems Debugging Alternatives Raymond points to a paper on evolvable systems as one aspect relevant to the bazaar style of development A paper by Clay Shirky Cavalier suggests open source versions of code review Of course open source always had informal code review Cavalier is asking that it be formalized describes Web protocols as a practical joke unit testing Cavalier is asking that open source projects to choose code structures that lend themselves to unit testing which is a first step towards integration testing Ignored almost all existing hypertext research Inefficient use of the network No support for load balancing security risks everywhere etc Inconsistent client implementations yet it won why May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 5 May 2 2000 Shirky describes the early 90 s It was more difficult for the centrally controlled standards to evolve Three major ways of indexing accessing information anonymous ftp gopher wais They had a high entry barrier to use Homogeneous network services At least higher than the Webs AOL Compuserve Prodigy etc There designs made assumptions that hindered evolution None of these things could interoperate When I first started using the Web the big win in my eyes was that it presented a uniform interface to the Internet Kenneth M Anderson 2000 6 Evolvable vs Centrally Controlled continued Evolvable vs Centrally Controlled May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 The Web in contrast had something that partially worked and could be evolved in several areas simultaneously 7 May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 8 Shirky s definition of evolvable Three rules for Evolvable Systems Those that proceed not under the sole direction of one centralized design authority but by being adapted and extended in a thousand small ways in a thousand places at once Only solutions that produce partial results when partially implemented can succeed They have room to grow What is is wrong Evolvable systems are currently addressing past needs but are quickly evolving to address current needs faster than non evolvable systems Evolution is cleverer than you are Systems that evolve are better able to adapt to new requirements May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 9 Capacity for Change May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 Web Success via Open Source Centrally designed protocols start out strong and improve logarithmically Evolvable protocols start out weak and improve exponentially It s dinosaurs vs mammals and the mammals win every time The Web is not the perfect hypertext protocol just the best one that s also currently practical Infrastructure built on evolvable protocols will always be partially incomplete partially wrong and ultimately better designed than its competition Shirky in a separate paper asserts May 2 2000 May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 10 11 The View Source command of Web browsers places the Web in the realm of open source techniques He attributes this as one factor in the Web s overall success Kenneth M Anderson 2000 12 Homesteading the Noosphere Zealotry and AntiCommercialism High Zealotry Raymond s second paper on open source Examines the hacker culture and its implications on open source The paper was written because Raymond perceived a contradiction in what hackers believe and what they do He characterized this as the difference between open source ideology and its actual practice May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 13 open source is my life Medium Low Commercial software is OK Kenneth M Anderson 2000 14 Open Source Definition http www opensource org Defines guidelines for open source licenses Nine combinations are possible and represented in the open source community An open source license must protect an unconditional right of any party to modify and redistribute modified versions of open source software Free Software Foundation Characterized as High Zealotry and High AC In theory this allows projects to be split into many different directions Other communities Perl tcl BSD Unix Python Linux Didn t quite buy into the FSF philosophy Kenneth M Anderson 2000 Commercial software is good and bad Low open source is ok sometimes May 2 2000 Commercial software is evil Medium open source is a good thing Types continued May 2 2000 High AC But this rarely happens why 15 May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 16 Ownership in Open Source Open Source Taboos In fact and in contradiction to the anyone canhack anything consensus theory the open source culture has an elaborate but largely unadmitted set of ownership customs These customs regulate who can modify software the circumstances under which it can be modified and especially who has the right to redistribute modified versions back to the community Quoted from Homesteading There is strong social pressure against forking projects It does not happen except under plea of dire necessity with much public self justification and with a renaming Distributing changes to a project without the cooperation of the moderators is frowned upon except in special cases like essentially trivial porting fixes Removing a person s name from a project history credits or maintainer list is absolutely not done without the person s explicit consent Quoted from Homesteading May 2 2000 May 2 2000 Kenneth M Anderson 2000 17 More on Ownership Raymond draws a parallel with these customs to a concept called land tenure To acquire ownership of land in this system Start the project Have ownership transferred to you Take control of an orphaned project Be the first to homestead it Transfer of title Adverse Possession The latter two has
View Full Document
Unlocking...