In 1999, the first edition of Eric S. Raymond’s book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” was published by O’Reilly Media. Almost 20 years later, most open source coding projects follow Raymond’s “Bazaar” model.
With the rise of cloud-based services and Open Web APIs, it may be time to re-visit Raymond’s 19 “lessons” to see how they can be applied (and/or modified) to fit a world where much of the software we use is no longer installed locally and is often kept out of reach from most developers and users.
It seems each day we learn about bugs or security shortcomings in cloud-based software. And API projects are sometimes cancelled and abandoned without notice. Do we need more “eyes on the code”? Are cloud-based services treating their users like “co-developers”? Are API consumers encouraged to use cloud-based APIs in ways that were “never expected”?
Are we building Cathedrals in the Cloud? More importantly, what can we do to foster a healthy, safe, ethical, and successful Open API Community?
Public Page for this talk is here: http://g.mamund.com/2018-03-osls/