The For Group: It was great how you all explained that open source provides the internet with open forum for "revolutionized" information, easy access to that information, and how there is a network harmony that is associated with open source. Also, I enjoyed the peer-to-peer interaction advantage of open source. As mentioned by Tuomi, open source "recruits developers from all over", thus bringing an array of ideas in order to improve software.
What I derived from Raymond's article was that the cathedral ideology involves carefully structured software, where the bazaar ideology contains:
1) Different agendas and approaches
2) Allows users to communicate efficiently with developers. Also, open sources are more effective in producing better, less time-consuming results.
3) Linux world is more free and open to searches that are available.
I can also agree with Raymond's views that though there may be a community of geeks that may develop software that is challenging for some users to utilize, there are many users that can be hackers, effective hackers who can shorten the debugging time for applications. Raymond also states, "Given a bit of encouragement, your users will diagnose problems, suggest fixes, and help improve the code far more quickly than you could unaided. I also commend the For group for using the iPad example, where the iPad develops new improvements of established software, and that the Bazaar ideology engages thousands of developers who swallow bugs and help applications to work better.
Along with Raymond, Koch, who is also for open source, views it from a research perspective. Koch claims that open source allows researchers to "have complete data sets and provides much historical information through large quantities of projects." I also agree with Koch because through the public availability of information through open source, any group can "come back" and reproduce the study, which reminds me of many psychology studies that have been conducted that replicate older studies. Therefore, like psychological studies, open source reproduces information that can also be improved, and has a great impact on validity and results.
As for the Against group, I also sided with some of the statements claimed about open source, such as how wikipedia is not respected in the academic community. Lanier talks about this idea through his analysis of wikipedia, where there are anonymous authors and editors who produce all different types of information, and that our intellect and productivity is flawed and decreased as a result. I personally would argue that though closed sources are more valid, they are less accessible for some users; not everyone has a Mac, or even access to GarageBand. More notably, the Audacity program (open-source) is just as useful as GarageBand, and can be used for everyone.
Overall, I felt like everyone did a fabulous job in presenting their arguments. After today's class, even as an advocate for open source information, I could admit that Wikipedia has its flaws with editing information. I have, along with many others, come across situations where even celebrity information (i.e. birthdates, place of birth) has not been validated (they show different birthdates of Mariah Carey, yet the same month and day). Nonetheless, open source software is still an outlet that is used to provide necessary information, even if there may be some negative effects to it.
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