Cathedral and the Bazaar in Bloomington, MN

"This is how we did it."
-Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel
It all started with a series of odd statistics. The leading challenger to
Microsoft's stranglehold on the computer industry is an operating system
called Linux, the product of thousands of volunteer programmers who
collaborate over the Internet. The software behind a majority of all the
world's web sites doesn't come from a big company either, but from a
loosely coordinated group of volunteer programmers called the Apache Group.
The Internet itself, and much of its core software, was developed through a
process of networked collaboration.
The key to these stunning successes is a movement that has come to be
called open source, because it depends on the ability of programmers to
freely share their program source code so that others can improve it. In
1997, Eric S. Raymond outlined the core principles of this movement in a
manifesto called The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which was published and
freely redistributed over the Internet.
Mr. Raymond's thinking electrified the computer industry. He argues that
the development of the Linux operating system by a loose confederation of
thousands of programmers-without central project management or
control-turns on its head everything we thought we knew about software
project management. Internet-enabled collaboration and free information
sharing, not monopolistic control, is the key to innovation and product
quality.
This idea was interesting to more than programmers and software project
leaders. It suggested a whole new way of doing business, and the
possibility of unprecedented shifts in the power structures of the computer
industry.
The rush to capitalize on the idea of open source started with Netscape's
decision to release its flagship Netscape Navigator product under open
source licensing terms in early 1998. Before long, Fortune 500 companies
like Intel, IBM, and Oracle were joining the party. By August 1999, when
the leading Linux distributor, Red Hat Software, made its hugely successful
public stock offering, it had become clear that open source was "the next
big thing" in the computer industry.
This revolutionary book starts out with A Brief History of Hackerdom-the
historical roots of the open-source movement-and details the events that
led to the recognition of the power of open source. It contains the full
text of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, updated and expanded for this book,
plus Mr. Raymond's other key essays on the social and economic dynamics of
open-source software development.
Open source is the competitive advantage in the Internet Age. The Cathedral
and the Bazaar is a must for anyone who cares about the computer industry
or the dynamics of the information economy. Already, billions of dollars
have been made and lost based on the ideas in this book. Its conclusions
will be studied, debated, and implemented for years to come.