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Comment by LaGrange | Hacker News Reader

Not a cathedral because it was not on a software but a near-monopoly market? I love taking metaphors too far, so I'll just notice that "near-monopoly" is what cathedrals are all about.

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Try reading again ?

Microsoft didn't architect their software as software, they shaped it as tools of monopoly enforcement.

There are numerous accounts from people involved about how marketing decisions relating to cutting of 3rd parties or trying to bludgon somebody into submission caused them to cripple their own software and its architecture.

See the evidence in the M$/Novell case for ironclad evidence of this.

Actually, the amusing thing is you're still reinforcing the cathedral metaphor. If the primary target of the cathedral was an event hall capable of housing a bunch of people it could have been built in a way more reasonable way. The point of cathedral is to be the biggest and most impressive kid on the block. Therefore I'd say that MS was designed in a cathedral way to achieve cathedral goal.

M$? Really? I thought HN and seasoned OSS developers were above this kind of petty name calling and sneering.

You know, first time I encountered the "M$" shorthand was in a TELEX (look it up if you don't know what that is) from Commodore Corporate about pricing of the the PC10 computer. I have used it ever since, based in part on what was not very diplomatically expressed in that missive about M$'s attitude to licensing.

as long as I can use the term I coined: "open shit"

Actually, the proper traditional way to insult Open Source is "Open Sores". Use that and the feeling I got during flame wars between high schoolers on IRC channels in the late nineties will be complete.

A friend of mine is really big on the term "freetard" for open source software.

> a TELEX (look it up if you don't know what that is)

This kind of passive-aggressiveness only reinforces the grumpy-old-man stereotype and makes it really hard to take you seriously.

Just because you read it a long time ago doesn't make it less petty or silly.

I hate to point this out, but that is just one of the benefits of the cathedral model: you get to inject alternate agendas into the project. The more bazaar-like a development model is, the less outside priorities factor in.

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