Homesteading the Noosphere

"Homesteading the Noosphere", an essay written by Eric S. Raymond about the social workings of Open Source software development, follows up on his influential "The Cathedral and the Bazaar". The essay concerns issues of project ownership and transfer, as well as investigating possible anthropological roots of the gift culture in open source as contrasted with the exchange culture of closed source software. He also investigates the nature of the spread of open source into the untamed frontier of ideas he terms the noosphere, postulating that projects that are too far ahead of their time fail because they are too far out in the wilderness, and that successful projects are somewhat related to existing projects. He delves deeply into his perceived hypocrisy between stated aims of open source and observed behaviors, and does an interesting job of exploring the underlying motivations of people involved in the open source movement. He seems to settle on the idea that striving for a great reputation within the 'tribe' is a key motivational feature.

See: noosphere

Book

• Eric S. Raymond: The Cathedral and the Bazaar (O'Reilly, January 2001; paperback ISBN 0596001088) — includes "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", "Homesteading the Noosphere", "The Magic Cauldron " and "Revenge of the Hackers "

External links

• http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/
• The essay readable on the web