The Cathedral and the Bazaar

The Cathedral and the Bazaar is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It was first presented by the author at the Linux Kongress on May 27, 1997 in Wurzburg and was published as part of a book of the same name in 1999. Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is a computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. His name became known within the hacker culture when he became the maintainer of the "Jargon File." After the 1997 publication of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," Raymond became, for a number of years, an unofficial spokesman of the open source movement."