GoKawiilOur era of sprawling, idiosyncratic tooling
In 1998, Eric S. Raymond published the founding text of open source software development, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”. In it, he detailed two methods of building software:
The Cathedral model is carefully planned, closed-source, and managed by an exclusive team of developers.
The Bazaar model is open, transparent, and community-driven.
The Bazaar model was enabled by the internet, which allowed for distributed coordination and distribution. More people could contribute code and share feedback, yielding better, more secure software. “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” Raymond wrote, coining Linus’ Law.
The ideas crystallized in “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” helped kick off a quarter-century of open source innovation and dominance.
But just as the internet made communication cheap and birthed the Bazaar, AI is making code cheap and kicking off a new era filled with idiosyncratic, sprawling, cobbled-together software.
Meet the third model: the Winchester Mystery House.
The Winchester Mystery House
Located less than 10 miles southeast from the Computer History Museum, the Winchester Mystery House is an architectural oddity.
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