The Cathedral and the Bazaar

The founding essay of the open-source movement. The thesis: the decentralised, seemingly chaotic model (the bazaar) produces better software than the planned, controlled one (the cathedral). Raymond codifies what Linux proved empirically — that coordination without formal hierarchy can work when there are clear protocols, intrinsic motivation and fast feedback cycles. It anticipates the logic of autonomous teams working with AI: less central planning, more distributed iteration.