Talk:Linus's law

message: Linus Torvalds didn't think this one up. He stole it in pure Dilbert-fashion! I worked with guys many, many, years ago that said basically the same thing. "The only bug free software is that code written one line at a time by a committee of experts all sitting in an auditorium facing a giant marker board" ...or something to that effect! This whole article is typical trivial factoid of no use to anyone.
:It is also commonly said that virtually all bugs can be fixed in a single line of code. But that's another "der", or "stating the obvious", just like this article.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.236.143.130 (talk) 22:39, 5 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Credit where credit is due 

message: Is this derived from what Linus said?
Or is this "ocular effect" older than Linus?
Either way, I thought it was worth sticking in this article.
--DavidCary 17:06, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  The ocular effect 

message: The rebuttal of the pointed-out criticisms was removed by Njyoder with this edit. I don't believe the way the article is now is NPOV, though. If criticism is presented, the other side should have a chance as well.
I have made an effort to revive the rebuttal, in a way which I hope will be more acceptable to everyone. Feel free to improve it, but I don't think it should be flat out removed. Capi 05:13, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Keeping criticism without a rebuttal is not NPOV 

message: Don't most open wikis (including Wikipedia) use this law as a basis? Should we mention this? - Kookykman|(t)e
:I think it is significant, however I also believe it has more impact in its obviousness than it would were it stated acutely. But just the same something along the lines of: "Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia, are examples of development that has embraced Linus's Law" might have a positive impact on the reader. Can somebody improve that statement? 199.80.154.88 19:16, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiki systems 

message: Many eyes fallacy should be either merged into, or linked from, the Criticism section of the accompanying article. --Jerzy•t 16:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge or  link needed

message: This para is awkwardly phrased - I suspect it was written by the Italian guy whose webpage it links to. Don't know enough to fix it.--Shtove 20:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The Criticism section is also very awkward.  It's full of run-on sentences and fragments.  Pimlottc 09:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Not only is it awkwardly phrased, but it provides neither more information nor more clarity---and those should be the only motivating reasons to introduce pseudo-mathematical terminology to a non-mathematical discussion. Certainly, any elementary school student who's just learned what an algebraic variable is can attempt a "mathematical interpretation" of almost anything, but that doesn't make it math, and doesn't make it useful. I'm deleting the section. 69.250.43.106 13:37, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Oh, yeah, and I love the "can be shown that..." part. The author of this section ought to spend a few years studying the notion of mathematical proof and a copy of Mythical Man Month before signing-on to his AOL account again. Sorry to be harsh, but this is the kind of garbage that typifies the faux-intellectual "blogosphere" (gag). Why can't we just block all users/IPs who attempt to link to blogger.com/livejournal/myspace/etc pages? 69.250.43.106 13:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: um, 69.250.43.10, are you replying to yourself or are there multiple users on the same IP address who just happen to agree with each other? I don't mean any offense; just kind of confused. ---A Fellow Editor 00:52, 12 February 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mathematical interpretation 

message: I think it is important to note that Linus's Law was a response to Brooks law as the difference between the Cathedral and Bazaar models of OSS development, if not a philosophy for overcoming brooks law.
Also, something that has changed since the adoption of Brook's law and Linus's law is the stress for the necessity in open source projects for conforming to coding standards (meaning code that should do the same thing should look the same across programmers, despite the fact this is NOT done by nature, or hardly simple). That, and the stress for "extreme" code documentation. Many large projects that adopt a bazaar model, specifically Mozilla, frequently reject code for poorly standardized programming technique in addition to poorly documented code.
This "standardization" reduces the effects of brooks law by keeping OSS developers "up-to-date" with projects in general without needing to know specifics of a particular project (a major cause for initial communications overhead).
This is the foundation for Linus's Law to have its desired affect. Without that premise, it is merely an ideology.
Hopefully the above can be used to correct some of the many problems mentioned above in the criticism section.
199.80.154.88 19:06, 26 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relationship to Brook's Law 

message: Do we need to add a section every time Torvalds makes a joke on a mailing list about Linus's Law number n, or do we have to demonstrate some kind of notability here? Marnanel (talk) 02:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Other usages" 

message: I removed the following on the basis:
* not notable: these laws aren't scientific laws in the first place! - this is like arguing with the logic of a joke.
* it is argumentative, and there is a difference between argumentative and critical.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Blablablob (talk • contribs) 
: *snip* removed copy of the deleted section for brevity; please see the diff instead -- intgr [talk] 00:31, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Too Much 

message: Located specific pages in the sources cited. I've revised the last paragraph to support the cited authors' position, which agnostically supports one element of the "law": more source code review is good. This unfortunately left the claim "simply declaring that they do not personally believe the law is true" without a citation to support it.  Help? --Lexein (talk) 01:36, 25 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Expanded citations 

message: There's a spelling mistake in the article... the title. If you use the spellchecker, it says the right spelling is "Linus' NOT linus's 1.129.97.25 (talk) 05:59, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, that's incorrect. This is a singular possessive form, not a plural.  You're not talking about a possession held by two people named Linu. — Smuckola(talk) 07:17, 9 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Linus' law, not linus's law

message: There is another law in the preface of the book The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, that is about hackers motivations, can it be noted here somehow?
El Hoy (talk) 18:22, 24 January 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  There is another Linus' law 

message: "My favorite part of the "many eyes" argument is how few bugs were found by the two eyes of Eric (the originator of the statement). All the many eyes are apparently attached to a lot of hands that type lots of words about many eyes, and never actually audit code." -Theo de Raadt on ESR's "Linus's Law"
https://groups.google.com/g/fa.openbsd.tech/c/gypClO4qTgM/m/UzcgS_iYn1IJ
>We build this stuff by trusting each other as friends, and that is
done on an international level. If anything, the layers and volume of
trust involved in software development should decrease trust. Oh
right, let's hear some of that "many eyes" crap again. My favorite
part of the "many eyes" argument is how few bugs were found by the two
eyes of Eric (the originator of the statement). All the many eyes are
apparently attached to a lot of hands that type lots of words about
many eyes, and never actually audit code.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xardox (talk • contribs) 06:01, 17 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theo de Raadt on ESR's "Linus's Law"