The Objective

This week, I watched Claude Warren’s insightful talk at DevWorld 2024, The Cathedral, the Bazaar, and the Coffeehouse. It not only revisited the core ideas of Eric S. Raymond’s classic essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, but also introduced a third metaphor—the Coffeehouse—as a lens to explore how open source communities collaborate today. These concepts helped me reflect on how my own group project operates, and gave me a clearer view of the evolving role of Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) in companies.

Lessons from The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Eric Raymond describes two contrasting development models:

• The Cathedral: code is crafted in private by a select group, released in polished but infrequent drops.
• The Bazaar: messy, dynamic, and constantly evolving, where the community contributes openly and frequently.

In our group project, I’m seeing how the bazaar model shows up in real time:

• “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”: We’ve found it easier to find issues to work on and brainstorm together as a group to figure out potential solutions. When multiple teammates discuss a certain idea, it helps progress in our workflow. Even someone not working on a specific task can offer a perspective that’s surprisingly helpful.
• Users as co-developers: While our “users” are internal (i.e., each other), we still rely on treating teammates as co-developers, documenting thoroughly and making modules reusable.

The Coffeehouse: A Third Space for Innovation

Claude Warren’s addition of the coffeehouse metaphor was a highlight for me. Unlike the cathedral or the bazaar, the coffeehouse is about informal collaboration spaces where ideas circulate, people exchange knowledge over “coffee,” and creative problem solving emerges in unstructured ways.

This metaphor resonated deeply with how we’ve been working. For example, the casual “what if we tried this?” moments in our groupchat represents the coffeehouse energy. It’s not always structured or planned, but it’s often where the most generative ideas come from. It reminded me that open source isn’t just a model of code sharing, it’s a culture of conversation and community.

What OSPOs Are Doing (and Why It Matters)

To better understand how the ideas from Raymond and Warren play out in real companies, I researched three organizations with dedicated Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs): GitHub, Google, and Spotify.

GitHub

GitHub’s OSPO acts as a bridge between maintainers, contributors, and corporate goals. People like Martin Woodward (Director of Developer Relations) support funding, community health metrics, and tool development for sustainable open source. GitHub’s OSPO leans into its position as a platform by amplifying best practices and transparency in development.

Google

Google’s OSPO (historically led by Chris DiBona) focuses on managing both outbound and inbound open source contributions. They handle licensing compliance, security audits, and community contributions to major projects like Kubernetes. Their internal tools help engineers navigate how to contribute safely and responsibly making open source more accessible within a large organization.

Spotify

Spotify’s OSPO emphasizes both external open source and internal “inner source”, where teams across the company share code using open practices. Leaders like Per Ploug help shape policies, empower devs to contribute externally, and align open source efforts with the company’s innovation strategy.

Across these examples, OSPOs act like the hosts of the coffeehouse, they don’t dictate the conversation, but they provide the space, safety, and resources to keep it going. They protect developers from legal issues, promote healthy contribution culture, and encourage knowledge sharing both inside and outside the organization.

Final Thoughts

Raymond’s essay showed me the power of decentralized collaboration. Warren’s talk reminded me that behind every commit and pull request is a group of humans with ideas, curiosities, and shared goals. And through my research into OSPOs, I now see how institutions can support these cultures by curating spaces that are open, thoughtful, and welcoming.