yup. its hard to describe what it was like back then. i was young and the idea that this hobby open source internet thing i had been interested in for a few years, had become mainstream, with Linus on the cover of Forbes, was mindblowing. i knew maybe 2-3 people in my entire life who had ever installed linux and that was only because of college. nobody else cared. but then Linus and ESR became a celebrity. dotcom bubble was in mainstream news and open source was part of the bubble. internet, and computers, were going mainstream.

So that is why i thought Cathedral and Bazaar was cool. Because i was young. didnt have access to Brooks book or others, physically, monetarily, but also it wasn't even written in my language. ESR's Cathedral was a textfile i could get off my dialup. and there just wasn't much else talking about what he was talking about.

Took me a while to realize. oh. hes just kind of a aggro dude writing extremist politics and ... this is like pseudo sociology. and nobody uses fetchmail.

edit - this is weird to think about but it's almost like... how they say 1991 was the "year punk broke", Nirvana and all this alt music / college rock was selling millions of copies and headlining festivals. these guys went from obscure regional bands who have to wash dishes for a living in between gigs, to international fame and millionaires almost overnight. im guessing there is a rock equivalent of Catb and i guess theres an equivalent discussion about how the music version of CatB wasnt really that insightful. but it sure was popular amongst the young folks, who saw the world change before their eyes.