Hackers in the Bazaar - Clayton Carroll

 I think that some aspects, but not most, of Linus' upbringing are similar to mine. We both were nerds, however I managed to be thankfully nerdy in a time where being a nerd was starting to be seen as cool. I also would not self-describe as ugly, or a 'runt' like Linus does. I also did not grow up in Finland - as much as Salt Lake City did feel like a foreign country at times compared to other walks of life in America. One aspect of our lives that was weirdly and interestingly similar however was our first introduction to computing. I, too, was given access to a computer (mine was an old, bricky laptop that wouldn't function without a charger and ran Windows Vista) via my mother's father. I grew up a lot with my grandparents for a variety of reasons, and I used to love going over to their house because I could use the laptop. I vastly used it for playing browser-based flash games from places like Armorgames, Maxgames, and Candyland.com. One thing that I did latch on...

 I think that the "service instead of software" is definitely an interesting business model, as it goes against the norm of traditional 'hey here is something with a price tag on it'. I think that because of the nature of how software has been shared throughout the history of computing, it makes sense for this business model to be implemented. It has been the computer and programming culture for important programs to be free, as originally computing was just a hobby and the knowledge that was shared was mostly academic in nature. But, as computing grew, the culture around free and open information was kept, leading to this model when businesses and programmers started to need to make money from it. This business model does this without affecting or disrupting the original free culture.  I think that ESR's remarks about the closed-source bs open-source approach when it comes to independent peer review is interesting, and correct for the most part. I don't think...

 I believe that the main motivations for participating in open source code and content stem from a greater purpose of self, and one's own sense of community. When you have a particular subject that you are passionate about, such as a particular game or community or program, you want for it to be shown to as many people as possible and for the community to be driven forward. One of the best ways to do this without outward advertisement is to participate in the community openly. Collaboration is the key to what makes large open source projects possible to execute, and the best thing that someone can do is to participate. It follows a similar structure to fundraising, concerts, or political events, where even if you are not directly monetarily donating it still matters a lot that you cared enough to show up in person to an event. The amount that the public 'cares' about a project usually is tied to overall community impact, and the amount of people affected. If an open source ...

 The difference between the Cathedral and the Bazaar styles of software development is that in the Cathedral model, code developed between releases is restricted to an inner circle of developers, while in the Bazaar model, the code is developed over the internet with full public showing of the development cycle. I personally do not have any strong feelings about either, but if I had to choose a favorite, I would probably say the Bazaar model. This is because I still believe that public knowledge and insight into products and projects is an important tool that many companies do not see as a tool. Many companies need to be secretive and select about what they show in their code base, I understand. However, I still feel a lot of projects especially in the gaming world would benefit from clearness. Some examples that I can think of are Counter Strike's Tick and Sub-tick system, and Call of Duty's DPS system. Because these code bases are not available to the public, people get specu...