The Cathedral and the Bazaar

From whatever published accounts exist of John Battelle, it is impossible to know whether the man catalyses revolutions or manufactures them. For sure, he stoked one when he co-founded Wired���a magazine that continues to chronicle the follies, foibles, freaks and the future of technology.
Subsequently, he went on to create the Industry Standard���an online magazine that tried to emulate the Economist.The storm this magazine generated petered out in 2001 when funds dried and Battelle was left without a cause.
Things changed a year later when he signed on with Viking Portfolio to write a book on search engine giant Google. Even as anticipation mounted on what beans Battelle's book would spill, the consummate technology journalist attempted another crack at a revolution.
He gallantly volunteered to discuss with readers and potential buyers everything from the title of the book, to its structure and publicly debate every idea that went into it. At the end of it all, if an idea could not stand public scrutiny, it would be discarded. If fresh ideas emerged, it would be incorporated into the book.
Kick starting the process was http://battlellemedia.com, a blog he promised to maintain on the progress of the book and the ideas he was chewing on.
Battelle kept his word. The blog attracted thousands of readers and generated a huge buzz. Earlier this year, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, was launched.
It met with critical acclaim and is now on its way to everybody's must-read list. As for Battelle, he's back on the charts as technology pundit.
It's much the same thing with Chris Anderson. Currently editor-in-chief at Wired and a former Economist hand, his book, The Long Tail, is due for launch in May 2006.
But the central theme behind the book is continually evolving on his blog www.longtail.com. In this public space, a few thousand readers evaluate every scrap of thought Anderson throws out.
Anderson claims the experience is rejuvenating. Speaking at the Churchill Club in the United States, he said, "We're blogging ideas and theories, basically stress testing in public. If I put a half-baked idea out there, it's amazing how my readers kind of bake it for me.
I get something like 5,000 visitors to the blog every day, and the comments are uniformly helpful, intelligent, and insightful."
As much as the idea sounds radical, it isn't entirely new. Software developers have tinkered with the idea for almost a decade now. Those who develop their code in a closed group are called cathedral builders. Then there are others who subscribe to the bazaar model of development.
In this model, after a piece of code is written, it is put out for scrutiny and amendments. A few thousand enthusiasts pounce on it, examine it for bugs, incorporate fixes and eventually create a piece of robust software.
The chaos of the bazaar created Linux, a free operating system, now a thorn in the flesh of established software vendors. Because the idea is inherently altruistic and harks back to gentler times when copyright laws weren't as stringent, it found resonance with left leaning libertarian writers.
Many of them banded together on sites like Wiki Books to collaborate on free textbooks that deal with everything from anthropology to zombie civilisations. On this site alone, 11,652 book modules exist in various stages of progress, some complete works, others still evolving while many are just scattered thoughts struggling to achieve form.
In niches, the experiment has worked spectacularly well. But attempts to attract mainstream writers are yet to take off. The few hundred attempts made until now reek of either downright incompetence or sheer mediocrity. Consider, for instance, a book under progress called Job.
The authors describe it as: "A story that transcends genre, that is genre, and that is not genre. A story by humanity, for humanity, but above humanity, for it is a story of people, of fantasy, of reality, of speculation, and of the relational attitudes that carry from generation to generation."
Whatever! One reason collaborative fiction is not yet mainstream is because there are no economic incentives. It's the same thing with collaborative software. Fantastic code. But few people know how to make serious money out of it. So what explains Battelle? Perhaps, the fact that he was writing non fiction.
Or maybe, he knew he'd get away just this once. Will it work again? Anderson, attempting to replicate Battelle's success, isn't so sure. "The questions that remain are: Is the process of tossing out half-baked ideas and letting the collective wisdom of the crowd bake them for me going to generate material I can use? Or is this a distraction? I don't really know yet; that's what the experiment is going to reveal."