As an learning project, I recently typeset Eric S. Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" essay in LaTeX. I was surprised to find that as I got more familiar

As an learning project, I recently typeset Eric S. Raymond's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" essay in LaTeX. I was surprised to find that as I got more familiar with the text that I disagreed with it quite a bit. Raymond was the coiner of "open source," and he's pretty positive throughout the essay that open-source software is superior to proprietary software technically. As this article points out, that relies a lot on there being enough people working on a project. Raymond also discourages the use of the term "free software" in another essay. Eric S Raymond concludes "Cathedral" with the statement that proprietary software is on its way out due to paid developers not being able to compete with the man-hours invested by volunteers. It's a very whiggish attitude that hasn't been borne out. He's still saying stuff like this, such as that Windows will inevitably become a layer on top of the Linux kernal. It was nice to see this article come along to HN when I was already thinking about this. I do think it's important that free software be used on principle, even if it's not better or set to wipe out its proprietary equivalent.