[FM Discuss] scribn the bazaar

[chris hofmann]

adam hyde wrote:
> 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.
>   

Hi Adam,

I think you are mostly right on your analysis, though I'd change a few 
terms and ideas around a bit


> The Cathedral model for production, is close to how a traditional
> publisher might work.
The "Cathedral" style  open source development model  that Eric talked 
about was were a development team produced a product or set of software, 
then "throw it over the wall"  for it to be shared and reused.

The key difference between the two models was in the "debugging" 
process.   see p 19

http://tinyurl.com/ybho2uv

I'd argue that tradtional publishers mostly use the cathedral style for:
- "content generation",
- and for "production" (e.g. the saugage making/polishing process driven 
by a benevolent dictator) ,
- and for "use" and "reuse".   

All of the life cycle stages for  "the work"  are all locked down.

>  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 agree.  That's what makes FLOSS manuals so interesting to me.  It has 
the chance to break down those barriers.
> I have some problems with the Cathedral as a publishing model, but it
> has its place, and if it works, it works.
Yeah, tradition publishing is not going away, or at least not going away 
any time soon.
>  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. 
>
>   
yeah, the question becomes "what will be the catalyst that changes the 
thinking of open source developers and and open source followers that  
should be recognizing this?"

I've argued without much success on this list that producing "the 
blockbuster" might be the thing that changes the thinking around on many 
levels.

It was interesting reading back though Eric's book and his analysis 
about the cathedral and the bazzar.  Its been a few years since I've 
done that, and many years when he came to Netscape to convince our 
development team that open source was the best path for the Netscape 
browser code.

Looking back though that set of criteria that Eric laid out I think 
FLOSS Manuals is tracking pretty well on all the main principals that 
will lead to eventual wide spread success.  The one are that might be 
missing is the attention to the "consumers" or "users" or "early beta 
testers".

See page 38 from the google books link above.

    "... 10.  [If you treat your beta-testers as your most valuable
    resource they will become your most valuable resource.]

FLOSS manuals is scratching the itch of groups that want to write 
manuals,   releaseing early and often, and the other things Eric 
articulated so well.    But, is it doing the job needed to understand 
the consumers of books and manuals.   

-Is FLOSS Manuals sharing and understand information about how widely 
those manuals are being used?
- how useful are the books and manuals to others?
- what the feedback is from people that tried to use the manuals?
- how could he works could be improved to better meet the needs of more 
users?
--- are the works helping people to solve problems or understand complex 
topics better?
- are the books and manuals gainning higher distribution and utility?
--- which ones are, and which ones are not?

Getting one work that really gets wide spread use and adoption by 
gathering, sharing, and acting on this kind data and really produces a 
polished book on a topic of wide interest might be the key that turns 
heads about how effective this publishing mechanism is over traditional 
publishing.

There are a number of  recent best sellers that deal with the changes in 
society around free and open culture, and about new thinking around 
behavior economics of "free and open".   If a book on that topic was 
produced using the FLOSS manual process by people that have been 
participating and observing the cutting edge of free/open/transparent 
development for over the last decade that would be a pretty powerful 
statement.

Maybe the booki could also help to engage more with the users of the 
books and manuals.

-chofmann
> thoughts...?
>
> adam
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