A Republican Reference to Obama as Open Source President

by Sam Dean - Nov. 06, 2008Comments (8)

If you've been around open source very long, you're probably familiar with Eric Raymond's famous tome The Cathedral and the Bazaar. It discusses, in Raymond's own words, "the 'cathedral' model of most of the commercial world, versus the 'bazaar' model of the Linux world." In it, Raymond also argues that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow."  If you saw the election night coverage on CNN, did you happen to catch the reference to this piece of writing and the open source movement? Here's what was said.

The reference on CNN to The Cathedral and the Bazaar came from Alex Castellanos, a Republican media consultant who was often featured as a talking head during the ramp-up to the election. After giving Barack Obama notice for saying "I need your help," Castellanos added the following, referring to the world of "computer engineering," which you can view in this YouTube video.

"The seminal essay, in wonk speak here, is The Cathedral and the Bazaar. The Cathedral is the old way of doing things--the way Microsoft builds software. Do it our way, worship in our church, or you don't get to do it at all.

The open source movement in computer engineering is people getting together from all over the world, and building software from the bottom up."

Castellanos went on to suggest that Obama promises to be a bottom-up president. This isn't a political blog, so I'll leave it entirely up to you to decide whether he will be or not. But it was interesting--despite the clunky references to "computer engineering"--to see the open source movement and one of its best-known thought pieces cited so directly in front of so many eyeballs.

 


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8 Comments
 

That is awesome and very appropriate for the amazing ground-up, technology-centric campaign that Barack conducted. YES WE CAN...


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This is amazing! And, coming from a Republican?! Even more so!


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Yeah! I like Alex Castellanos, a very unRepublican Republican, but never expected him to have read the Cathedral & the Bazaar.


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Very Apt! The OpenSource movement personifies socialism. We in Alaska do the same thing and I have a 85% approval rating as a result. Now that the election is over, I can go back to being my Socialist self, cross party lines and support Brother (no its not a racist slur!) Barack in his wealth distribution endeavors just as I've done in the great state of Alaska. Now why didn't Katie Couric ask me about this instead of the gotcha questions like "What books do you read"! Bitch!


- SarahP


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Can we please get over the Palin bashing and move on...I'd rather not give her any more attention...


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nice to know that the beliefs of the programing world are slowly starting to spill over into the rest of the world. considering peoples constant interaction with them, I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner.


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I'm really, really, really hopeful that finally Government can stop wasting money and start using Linux and open Source and mollycoddling the monopolists.


Of course,the cynic in my thinks that in a few months he'll be palling around with Bill Gates and talking about "how great it is that he invented the Internet".


It all comes down to -- is it a victory for the Outs...or the Ins ??


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Nice, well, you all can embrace open source as much as you want, but you forget (or may not even know) that the majority of the business world in the US runs C# for reasons, much of it related to its cross between ease of use and rapid development. Personally, even if the government decreed the need to use OS I will stick with what has always worked for me and companies I support. Allow me to put it this way... although allot of large companies run java and the like, the initial costs are high in part due to the decrepit state of the development learning curve and the expense and lack of consistency in tools. Yes it's nice that some desktop stuff can be used in schools and SMB allows Linux to squeeze into MS lans, but data in data out is what makes or breaks companies, and that is where MS shines. Nothing they do is perfect, by far, but across the board the tools are heavily available, the third party add-ons (which open-source has a seriously hard time making money) is far more advanced and the MS hold on Desktop / Development integration is very mature. So all of the screaming aside, I'm waiting to find that in two years that Gitmo will be open, Republicans will take the Hill again, and Obama’s 'support' for allot of these topics will be non-existent. You have to dig allot deeper than the happy surface to see the whole picture. In the commercial world, value means allot. If the base is free, management will not take it seriously. Thus programmers get paid less, development projects turn to sludge, businesses fail and so on…


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