[FM Discuss] scribn the bazaar

[adam hyde]

On Fri, 2009-11-06 at 06:39 -0500, Andy Oram wrote:
> Can you clarify the difference between the FLOSS Manuals approach and
> the top-down approach? Is the first approach leaving it up to authors
> to self-select and write what they want to write, while the second
> approach identifies topics in advance and tries to assign them to
> authors?

yes

adam



> 
> Andy
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "adam hyde" <adam at flossmanuals.net>
> To: "floss" <discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net>
> Sent: Thursday, November 5, 2009 1:59:43 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: [FM Discuss] scribn the bazaar
> 
> hi,
> 
> Recently I have been pondering the nature of Book Sprints and the FLOSS
> Manuals community. It seems to me, in the somewhat simplistic
> characterisation of Eric Raymond, that we are operating in the bazaar.
> That is, we are a self-organising and rather ad-hoc community. It could
> be described as organised from the bottom-up, unstructured, and open. 
> 
> However, we produce extremely good manuals, and we do it very fast.
> 
> The Cathedral model for production, is close to how a traditional
> publisher might work. Indeed, it has often been cited by media
> commentators that with the advent of the book, the 'book in stone' (the
> Cathedral) was to be replaced by paper. It might have seemed at the time
> that books would overthrow architecture. However, it actually seems more
> accurate to say that paper has maintained the architecture quite well.
> That is, top-down, highly structured, and closed.
> 
> I have some problems with the Cathedral as a publishing model, but it
> has its place, and if it works, it works. However what I see as
> problematic is the evolution of relatively recent writing projects that
> are related to open source but do not seem to recognise their own
> Cathedralness. This seems to me to be very interesting and problematic
> because without recognising their own nature they fail on their own
> terms. 
> 
> These projects want to catalyse networks, and return a product - often
> 'a book'. They are often characterised by the thorough research of the
> proposed contents of the book, the attraction of collaborative partners
> based on network status, and the assignment of chapters to authors. 
> 
> What I find interesting is that these projects, while seeing themselves
> 'part of the bazaar' and wanting to rapidly produce material, and foster
> collaboration, seem instead to produce books very slowly and without
> much collaborative contributions within the text. They seem, in other
> words, to mirror quite closely the Cathedral model for production. 
> 
> thoughts...?
> 
> adam
> 
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> -- 
> Adam Hyde
> Founder FLOSS Manuals
> German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
> Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals
> 
> "Free manuals for free software"
> http://www.flossmanuals.net/about
> 
> 
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> 


-- 
Adam Hyde
Founder FLOSS Manuals
German mobile : + 49 15 2230 54563
Email : adam at flossmanuals.net
irc: irc.freenode.net #flossmanuals

"Free manuals for free software"
http://www.flossmanuals.net/about