The Bazaar Model

Deriving its name from the 1997 publication of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” by open source advocate programmer Eric Raymond, the Bazaar model is a bottom-up model of system development that treats a technology as a service to the user first and foremost, trying not to lock the user into a specific technology, but rather allowing the technology to shift to meet the user's needs.

As such the entity that created the initial system does effectively lose unique control of the system, as whilst they create the initial system, they do not have control over the user's choice to keep using that system, nor do they have control over exactly which hardware and software interfaces they will or will not allow to be plugged into the system.

Under a Bazaar model, if the original system creators do not keep pleasing the customers, even if their system is wildly successful, they may find themselves sidelined as other creators are able to offer superior systems to the original, that interoperate seamlessly. As such, many systems creators are reticent unless pushed, to adopt a Bazaar model.

With regards to virtual environments the benefits of using a Bazaar model to design the virtual environment and its software are obvious. The user can create content in a virtual environment, and may migrate that content across servers, knowing it will remain accessible even if the company that created the original VR should go bankrupt, or simply decide to stop supporting a given operating system. Additionally, the user may augment their experience with any sensory hardware they like, regardless of manufacturer, so long as it is compatible with the VR.

The Bazaar model is of course favoured by the open source community, and derives its strength by turning every aspect into a set of standardised protocols. Anyone who wishes to can write software or design hardware to be compatible with those protocols, and it will immediately work.

Such an approach to a virtual environment turns the environment itself into a service which will change as needed to fit the specific requirements of the user, and allow the system to grow far beyond the limits the originating company intended.

Ultimately, the Bazaar model is likely going to be essential for VR to truly become mainstream, as virtual environments using the Bazaar model's opposite number – the top-down Cathedral model – always remain operating with their content accessible, only at the whim of the company that mades the VR software.

See Also: Walled Garden, Cathedral Model

Below, we offer a selection of links from our resource databases which may match this term.

The Bazaar Model The Cathedral Model

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Open Source 3D Human Models

On the 26th of May 2005, two companies (Zygote Media Group and e frontier) joined forces to give us a new model of open source distribution ? 3D avatars.

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