Thoughts on "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" article

The article called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" was an interesting read; it was quite unique to read the author’s thoughts on both the type of open source development styles, namely "Cathedral Model" and the "Bazaar Model". Personally, the Cathedral model is definitely a more traditional model in software development domain and it is still implemented and practiced on a very large scale whereas the bazaar model is more of a new model that is being implemented ever since the creation and existence of open source.

If you compare both the models, both have their relative weaknesses and strengths. But being a programmer myself, I think the ideology and practices behind the bazaar model tends to work a little better rather than the Cathedral model. The reason behind which is that when testing is carried out on the released software; it is done through the users or the co-contributors perspectives rather than the programmer. So you get this different viewpoint on bugs and problems discoveries. Also, a lot of times in the Cathedral model, the programmers spend tremendous amount of time in testing and yet when the software is released, it is still compiled with lots of nasty bugs that tend to discourage the set programmers and also takes away the motivation behind testing per-se. This sort of discouragement is eliminated in the Bazaar model.

Programmers are also bothered by the question of whether or not their software will work for other people! Well the answer to which most often lies with their software users. The most successful software is that which not only respond to user needs, but actively seek it out and that can be accomplished through the Bazaar model of open source development style. Not to mention that bazaar model is cheaper when it comes to development cost and when done effectively, it can save months of development and testing effort and hundreds of dollars if you are paying your programmers.