Cathedrals and free sofware

Yesterday evening we visited the center of Vienna. The very interesting cathedral showed us clearly as Eric S. Raymond, while well versed in computers, understands actually very little about architecture and art history.
In fact, the cathedral makes a very nice and close analogy to free software:

• it must be fixed continuously (it is made of porous sandstone, so blocks get eroded quickly)
• there are several unfinished parts (a tower has been left half), because there was not enough money to finish it
• it started with an architecture (romanesque) and it was changed to another one (gothic), without any interruption in service
• lots of people build it, mostly poorly paid.

So, the analogy between open source software and bazaar, from one side, and proprietary software and cathedral, from the other, although suggestive, is nothing but wrong.
See: the original page for the full text.

Thanks Thomas for the tour.