Why 'Open Source Ecumenism'?

This is a blog about approaching ecumenism as a "bazaar" rather than as a "cathedral". The Cathedral and the Bazaar is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods that is commonly regarded as the manifesto of the open source movement.

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.
* The Bazaar model, in which the code is developed over the Internet in view of the public.

The essay's central thesis is Raymond's proposition that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow": 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.