Reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar reminded me of this other book that I really enjoyed called The Starfish and the Spider. The former is a management book highlighting the benefit of leader-less organizations and advocates for decentralization as a driver for innovation. As a neophyte fan of organizational theory, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between the two books. First, I should shamefully confess my nerdish background and admit upfront that I’ve used Linux for several undergraduate engineering projects. One of the things that always fascinated me about Linux was the vibrant, if not evangelic, community fostering its growth. It was completely organic, without a Steve Jobs or a Bill Gates at the helm. Nevertheless, there was troubleshooting, support and rapid advances in the OS that rivaled their coordinated “cathedral” counterparts.
The Starfish and the Spider suggests that these decentralized and networked organizations are nearly impossible to cut-down by traditional means. The Cathedral and the Bazaar hints at this, as evident by the cult like following and success of Linux. I guess one of the advantages of Linux is that Windows and Apple can’t phase out Linux out of their market-share as I’m sure they would like to do. An open and free “bazaar” of ideas offers a fertile ground for innovation that make a coordinated effort very difficult to quell. The bazaar cultivates a sense of ownership over the code, in which incentivized “bugs” trade ideas. Going with this analogy, a cathedral is where you are evangelized to from the pulpit, from the top-down. Exchanging who preaches from the pulpit is relatively easy compared to stopping the exchange of ideas, as is the case with Linux.
Starfish organizations are leaderless and are decentralized. They are held together by ideology. In essence, the values are the organization. As is the case for Linux, or many of the other Web 2.0 phenomena we’ve seen so far, the individual centered experience shifts the incentive structure. Phenomena where institutions matter less and people are more-or-less equal, a sense of purpose is a very difficult driver to both control and stop. Nevertheless, excellent software is developed.
We must abdicate control to the crowd-source in order for successful and useful code to be written. That’s not to say it’s completely invincible. Any open system is always susceptible to poor solutions that might infect the rest of the system. As quickly many of these phenomena come to pass, they can just as easily vanish. Moreover, for every quality piece of code and add-on script out there, there are even more pieces of absolute rubbish.
Nevertheless, I believe there is something to this bazaar approach. Ideally, I guess the most optimal solution is to integrate both irreconcilable approaches. Software that is both open-sourced, but ultimately vetted by some kind of respected and trusted institution. A hybrid approach is not intuitive and difficult to think of in terms of implementation. My general feeling is that this sort of theme is creeping up again and again in this socio-technological space. I think the starfishand the bazaar are here to stay.
