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I feel like its a bit weird all the examples are coordination between separate (possibly competing) projects, when the implied solution is having a single perso

I feel like its a bit weird all the examples are coordination between separate (possibly competing) projects, when the implied solution is having a single person responsible for quality. That doesn't make sense to me. Sure you could have a single person responsible for quality within a project, and that may even be a good idea (BDFL is a pattern for a reason). However you can't do that across organizational boundries. Ports will have lots of duplication because the entire point is to bring the wider world together including projects competing against each other. Like the solution just doesn't seem applicable here. It feels like the equivalent of someone suggesting to fix the problem of firefox & chrome doing the same thing by appointing a single person responsible for web quality. The solution doesn't seem wrong so much as non-sensical. I don't particularly see the connection to cathedral & bazaar either. Even before that book competing software projects had duplication.

mananaysiempre 3y ago
The implicit point of comparison looks to be the monolithic Unix of old, where the entirety of the code of the system is (hopefully, ostensibly, allegedly) developed with a single vision, except for the application programs in the narrowest sense of the word (e.g. the particular piece of numerics you needed to design your airplane or whatnot, but not the editor you used to write it, the cluster scheduler you used to run it, the typesetter you used to write down your results, or the 3D viewer you used to present them). As far as I understand, that—compared to the Linux distro which derives a similar range of capability from a primordial soup of small nuggets of software—was Raymond’s “cathedral” as well, and the original model of the BSDs, before the range of expected functionality was broad enough that distro-ish “ports” became unavoidable. One example that’s just plain interesting to read to see what things people were exploring (because, let’s admit it, historical Unix source gets plain boring after a while) is AT&T Research’s https://github.com/att/ast https://github.com/att/ast.
- cpach 3y ago
  This makes me wonder, in relation to the article: Why don’t we see more of HP-UX, AIX, Irix etc…? For better or worse, Linux has outcompeted most of those systems. I don’t claim Linux is perfect, but I believe there are reasons for it’s popularity.
  - samus 3y ago
    It's good enough for many applications, and few of its competitors had features that were so crucial to stop customers from leaving. Also, these competitors were all intimately tied to their platform. Unless you had one of these machines, there was no reason to ever use these OSs.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Linux is free beer. We all know what trying to make Solaris free beer made to Sun. Orange juice made from bitter oranges tastes really well when given for free.
  - brightlancer 3y ago
    Commercial UNIX was built to run on expensive RISC hardware; Linux was built to run on cheap x86 hardware. Commercial UNIX was certified to run Big Corporate applications; Linux ran FLOSS LAMP stacks. When x86 hardware became cheap AND reliable, and web apps took off, Linux became the better choice. The commercial UNIX vendors didn't adjust fast enough and were left behind. And now we have a network effect, where very few developers/ engineers know HP-UX or AIX, and software is being written specifically for Linux that would have to be ported to HP-UX or AIX.

mananaysiempre 3y ago

The implicit point of comparison looks to be the monolithic Unix of old, where the entirety of the code of the system is (hopefully, ostensibly, allegedly) developed with a single vision, except for the application programs in the narrowest sense of the word (e.g. the particular piece of numerics you needed to design your airplane or whatnot, but not the editor you used to write it, the cluster scheduler you used to run it, the typesetter you used to write down your results, or the 3D viewer you used to present them). As far as I understand, that—compared to the Linux distro which derives a similar range of capability from a primordial soup of small nuggets of software—was Raymond’s “cathedral” as well, and the original model of the BSDs, before the range of expected functionality was broad enough that distro-ish “ports” became unavoidable. One example that’s just plain interesting to read to see what things people were exploring (because, let’s admit it, historical Unix source gets plain boring after a while) is AT&T Research’s https://github.com/att/ast https://github.com/att/ast.

cpach 3y ago
This makes me wonder, in relation to the article: Why don’t we see more of HP-UX, AIX, Irix etc…? For better or worse, Linux has outcompeted most of those systems. I don’t claim Linux is perfect, but I believe there are reasons for it’s popularity.
- samus 3y ago
  It's good enough for many applications, and few of its competitors had features that were so crucial to stop customers from leaving. Also, these competitors were all intimately tied to their platform. Unless you had one of these machines, there was no reason to ever use these OSs.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Linux is free beer. We all know what trying to make Solaris free beer made to Sun. Orange juice made from bitter oranges tastes really well when given for free.
- brightlancer 3y ago
  Commercial UNIX was built to run on expensive RISC hardware; Linux was built to run on cheap x86 hardware. Commercial UNIX was certified to run Big Corporate applications; Linux ran FLOSS LAMP stacks. When x86 hardware became cheap AND reliable, and web apps took off, Linux became the better choice. The commercial UNIX vendors didn't adjust fast enough and were left behind. And now we have a network effect, where very few developers/ engineers know HP-UX or AIX, and software is being written specifically for Linux that would have to be ported to HP-UX or AIX.