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The Bazaar Model

• It is the theoretical basis that try to explain the fast growing of some pieces of Free Software -Apache Web Server, Linux Kernel-.
• Proposed by Eric Raymond, an open source evangelist.
• Development of traditional Software is like building a Cathedral. Its management is centralized, as the masons only build whatever they were said to be built.
• The new model: Bazaar model. Decentralized management, lots of people doing its own.
• It has historical cases on Computational Chemistry: GAMESS, CCP4. And It worked!
• Bazaar development has one problem: nobody does what nobody want to do -eg, there are lots of GUIs; but FSF GPLed kernel, Hurd, ten years after the work begun, is far to be completed-.
• Eric Raymond's model has flaws: it does not explain Motzilla's disaster.
• One of its stronger points is the mass of parallel beta-testers with knowledge and ability of correct and improve the source code.

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