Home > The Cathedral and the Bazaar

The essay contrasts two different free software development models:

• The Cathedral model, in which source code is available with each software release, but code developed between releases is restricted to an exclusive group of developers. GNU Emacs and GCC are presented as examples.
• The BazaarA bazaar is a market, often covered, typically found in areas of Muslim culture. The word bazaar comes from the Persian word bzr whose etymology goes back to the Pahlavi word baha-char meaning "the place of prices". Examples include: The Grand Bazaar, Ist model, in which the code is developed over the InternetThis article is about the Internet the extensive, worldwide computer network available to the public. An internet is a more general term for a set of interconnected computer networks that are connected by internetworking''. WWW information network structu in view of the public. Raymond credits Linus TorvaldsLinus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969) began the development of Linux, an operating system kernel, and today acts as the project coordinator (or Benevolent Dictator for Life). Inspired by the teaching system Minix (developed by Andrew Tanenbaum), leader of the Linux kernel project, as the inventor of this process. He also provides anecdotal accounts of his implementation of this model for the fetchmail project.

The essay's central thesis is Raymond's proposition that Given enough eyeballs, all bugA computer bug is an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program that prevents it from working correctly or produces an incorrect result. Bugs arise from mistakes and errors, made by people, in either a program's source code or its desigs are shallow (which he terms Linus's lawLinus's law named after Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, states that given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow . More formally: "Given a large enough beta-tester and co- developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix): if the source code is available for public testing, scrutiny, and experimentation, then bugs will be discovered at a rapid rate. In contrast, Raymond claims that an inordinate amount of time and energy must be spent hunting for bugs in the Cathedral model, since the working version of the code is available only to a few developers.

The essay helped convince most existing open source and free software projects to adopt Bazaar-style open development models, fully or partially — including GNU Emacs and GCC, the original Cathedral examples. Most famously, it also provided the final push for NetscapeNetscape Communications Corporation was the publisher of the Netscape Navigator web browser as well as many other internet and intranet client and server software products. The company was founded as Mosaic Communications Corporation on April 4, 1994 by M to open the sourceOpen-sourcing or software liberating is the act of releasing previously proprietary software under an open source/ free software license. Notable software packages which have been open sourced, or liberated, include: Netscape Navigator, the code of which of Netscape CommunicatorNetscape Communicator was the proper brand name of an Internet suite produced by Netscape Communications Corporation in the late 1990s. This suite included the Netscape Navigator web browser (its most prominent component) along with applications for email and start the Mozilla project.

The Cathedral is also the typical development model for proprietary software — with the additional restriction in that case that source code is usually not provided even with releases — and a common usage of the phrase "the Cathedral and the Bazaar" is to contrast proprietary with open source. However, the original essay concerns itself only with free software, and does not address proprietary development in any way at all.

The terminology has been extended to describe non-software projects. Wikipedia is a Bazaar-style project, while Nupedia and the Encyclopædia Britannica are Cathedral-style projects.