ESR seemed to target linux userland and GNU-toolchain/utilities in his description of Linux as a Bazaar, although not to the exclusion of the kernel. I think i

ESR seemed to target linux userland and GNU-toolchain/utilities in his description of Linux as a Bazaar, although not to the exclusion of the kernel. I think it is plausible to describe the kernel as much more Cathedral-like, at least in parts where Linus is very strict about how components should be integrated. I can see where parent could have got this impression. At the same time, there are parts of kernel that are bazaars. Virtualization/Hypervisor support is the area I'm most familiar with; the various hypervisor vendors basically crammed their paravirt calls and passthrough drivers in, without unifying the interface at all. Yes, Linus and others were very aggressive with maintaining the code quality, but less with the architecture. There are other areas of kernel (particular drivers), where we've seen similar situations.