My speculation: you're reading a lot more heat into 'tptacek's comments than is there, and raising the temperature of the discussion unnecessarily. For example:
rektide> "My god man."
rektide> "I don't see how you can so callously disregard the most central message & imagery of this book. Yes, the individual ideas are ill spoken & poorly emphasized pieces of the key revelation"
I don't read 'tptacek as callously disregarding anything. Those examples are used to support esr's thesis, and to use them to test whether or not the thesis is supported is fair. And "callously disregarding" is pretty charged language.
rektide> "...and in your 9 comments here so far you have nothing but bile to spill about them perhaps rightly."
Again, "nothing but bile" is pretty charged and in my opinion an inaccurate description of their comments. The most arguably hyperbolic part I read from him is "I think a case can be made that this is one of the most overrated pieces of technical writing of the last 25 years, and even that is tempered by the preface "I think a case can be made that". There are places where he's pretty declarative in his language, but nothing I read is pejorative or an attack/
rektide> "But I cannot broke this hit campaign you are launching, when you are so persitently cantankerous & negative, without ever going near the actual inner truth that it did remarkably connect a generation with. I wish you could have some balance & some ability to see value, Thomas."
There are numerous places where 'tptacek acknowledges positive aspects of the piece:
tptacek> "What's notable about Cathedral is its timing; it did capture the zeitgeist of what was an important moment in the computing field"
And is actively engaged in furthering the discussion:
tptacek> "I appreciate getting called on this and forced to think more carefully about it. Thanks for the response!"
rektide> "The true-feeling parts of Raymond's article read to me like a document of, for lack of a better term, late 1990s programming thinking."
Again, pretty charged.
Anyway, that's what I think is likely the cause of the downvotes from reading your comment in the context of what 'tptacek has written. But of course, I'm not a mind reader.
(I'm just sharing my impressions because you asked and in the hope that you find them useful: I'm not likely to follow up in this thread because discussions of downvoting and tone are rarely useful. I question the utility of me even posting this response.)
I still struggle with what I see as a Thomas fighting a war of technicalities to avoid the actual point, and I tried to leave significant rope to allow his annoyances. And I don't K ow how to walk back what I still feel like is an injustice that hurts the truth so badly, don't see how temperance can be found against this. But I get my post's polarization better and see how the room is so happy to stick to Thomas here.
> "I still feel like is an injustice that hurts the truth so badly,"
In my opinion, this is what you should be supporting. Providing examples that support the truth goes a lot further. Off the top of my head, a question I have is why is the cathedral/bazaar model better than the alternative 'tptacek puts forward from Gabriel's Worse Is Better or Zawinski's CADT model at describing open source? (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35941338) What in particular do you find useful and true in CatB that you believe 'tptacek is dismissing unfairly?
> "how the room is so happy to stick to Thomas here."
One doesn't have to agree with 'tptacek to think your comment was unhelpful. It's not zero-sum, or us-vs-them.
I'm not great at contentious discussions (particularly on internet forums). Your "I still struggle with..." is something I find myself thinking in situations like this. The best I can do is try to catch myself, and figure out how to express what I'm trying to get across in ways that move the conversation in a constructive direction. Easier for me to say than to do.
----
rektide> "But I cannot broke this hit campaign you are launching, when you are so persitently cantankerous & negative, without ever going near the actual inner truth that it did remarkably connect a generation with. I wish you could have some balance & some ability to see value, Thomas."
Again, pretty charged.
There are numerous places where 'tptacek acknowledges positive aspects of the piece:
tptacek> "What's notable about Cathedral is its timing; it did capture the zeitgeist of what was an important moment in the computing field"
tptacek> "The true-feeling parts of Raymond's article read to me like a document of, for lack of a better term, late 1990s programming thinking."
And is actively engaged in furthering the discussion:
tptacek> "I appreciate getting called on this and forced to think more carefully about it. Thanks for the response!"
----
My god man. The Bazaar won. Brooks was a fine piece but it was about reinterpetting the same values of Simplicity, Correctness, Consistency, Completeness within a team making their own architecture decisions for their own software. The Bazaar model has many relates aspects, but it is about something different: about doing software wide & in the open & many pokers in the fire. You don't seem for an instant to recognize this simple key aspect.
I don't see how you can so callously disregard the most central message & imagery of this book. Yes, the individual ideas are ill spoken & poorly emphasized pieces of the key revelation, and in your 9 comments here so far you have nothing but bile to spill about them perhaps rightly. There's justifiable disdain.
But the overall portrait painted is remarkable & you seem so far from that core revelation. And it seems like the Bazaar won, in almost all computing spaces. Almost everything successful & scales in computing has originated from ideas that people set free, tech that was too important to Cathedralize, to entomb in specifics.
I would love to have some other better books or references on thinking of systems as either larger Bazaar social processes, as dynamic systems, versus static closed Cathedral systems. There is plenty not great & incidental about C&B. But I cannot broke this hit campaign you are launching, when you are so persitently cantankerous & negative, without ever going near the actual inner truth that it did remarkably connect a generation with. I wish you could have some balance & some ability to see value, Thomas.