Cathedral Thinking

Joel West recently wrote a blog entry summarizing his thoughts on a column by Chris O’Brien on his reaction to Cathedral Thinking.  In it, Joel says, “[utility executive Jim] Rogers is proving the timelessness of two well-understood principles of effective business (or military) strategy. One is a long-term vision of what needs to be done; the second is creating a strategy (or perhaps just a culture or a set of enabling competencies) that will bring that vision to fruition, even if it’s long after the strategist is gone.”

Take a moment to read Joel’s complete entry on Cathedral Thinking.

Nathan Willis wrote an article highlighting some recent problems on open source projects and referenced the idea of Cathedral Thinking.

But that absence of an open invitation to contribute is topped by direct rejection. In August, an excited would-be participant learned about the project and wrote to the gimp-developer mailing list volunteering to help. GIMP UI Redesign team leader Peter Sikking replied, saying, “I am afraid that I do not have positions open at the moment.”

Elsewhere in that same message, and in other posts to gimp-developer, Sikking’s comments back up the notion that he regards the GIMP UI redesign as his team’s project and his team’s alone, and that that team has no room for anyone else.

Clearly the team members are qualified, but refusing to entertain even the possibility that there are other individuals with worthwhile contributions flies in the face of free software and open source ideals. It is Cathedral thinking, not Bazaar.

When open source projects close the process, something’s wrong (linux.com)