>> Dale Dougherty is editor and publisher of MAKE and CRAFT
magazines. dale@oreilly.com
Agreat babbling bazaar of differing Bazaar Bizarre would branch out to other cities,
agendas” is how Eric S. Raymond including Cleveland and Los Angeles, as well as
describes the Linux software commu- becoming a part of Maker Faire in the Bay Area.
nity in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Raymond’s Kramer created craftster.org in 2003 using open
book contrasts two different styles of organizing source message-board software that she tweaked
projects. The old style is like a cathedral: it origi- and tailored to fit her own ideas for the site. “People
nates from a unified plan that orders the work of love to post how-to projects,” says Kramer, compar-
highly specialized workers over several generations. ing crafters to open source developers. “They enjoy
When Raymond looked into the Linux project, he the praise and recognition they get from sharing
found a very different style: open, decentralized, ideas, expertise, and designs.” What they build over
some might say chaotic. He observed that building time is reputation in the community.
a cathedral required the design of an architect, Not everyone wants to share, and nobody should
while the bazaar model required a leader who was be forced to do so, Kramer believes. “On Craftster,”
able to “recognize good design in others.” she adds, “we discourage people who sell what
In the craft world, if the cathedral is Wal-Mart, they make from posting their original project idea
then the alternative is Bazaar Bizarre. if they don’t want people to copy it.” However, the
Leah Kramer, a software developer from Boston, process of commercializing work can be difficult,
is one of the organizers of Bazaar Bizarre. Its original whether selling crafts or software. People who are
founders were about a dozen “arty types” who open sourcing or sharing their work are motivated
knew each other from local bands. Too familiar with to craft for different reasons.
typical holiday craft fairs that “smell like potpourri,” “It doesn’t matter so much what I sell. I just love
they wondered what a craft fair might look like if to show off what I make,” Kramer says. Many crafters
it reflected their own tastes. What if they could find do craft projects not as a job, she points out, but
things they’d actually want to buy and give to friends? as something to do outside of work. “Crafting is a
Initially, they had a hard time finding enough chance to exercise new skills and develop interests
crafters who represented what they were looking that you don’t get to do at your day job.”
for — crafts that were clever, funny, or commenting In this issue, Tom Maiorana writes about platform
on pop culture. They had to cajole friends into par- shoes, or rather, shoes as an open source platform.
ticipating, some of whom had never crafted before. He shows you how to disassemble shoes you already
Bazaar Bizarre got its start in 2001 with 20 exhib- own and remake them in new ways. Modularity, he
itors in a tiny VFW hall in Somerville, Mass. One of notes, is a key to success in open source projects
the first projects was macaroni glued on old album because it makes projects easier to share. It means
covers. “Craft is another way to express your style conceiving a project as a set of distinct components
or your sense of humor,” says Kramer. “It’s about that can be worked on separately — failures in one
things you like, which could be TV shows, video module should not affect other modules — and then
games, or music.” recombined in different ways.
Kramer attended the first Bazaar Bizarre and, By developing a platform for sharing, Bazaar
seeing its potential, got involved the next year as Bizarre and Craftster are helping crafters expand
an organizer. In its second year, Bazaar Bizarre had their skills, having the kind of impact that open
100 vendors and 4,000 attendees. They had three source has had among software developers. Having
times more applications than tables, so they put platforms for sharing helps to grow the community, together a jury to select the best crafters. Eventually, not only in quantity, but in quality, as well. ×
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