Encyclopedia  |   World Factbook  |   World Flags  |   Reference Tables  |   List of Lists     
   Academic Disciplines  |   Historical Timeline  |   Themed Timelines  |   Biographies  |   How-Tos     
Your Ad Here
Sponsor by The Tattoo Collection


Linus's law
Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index

Linus's law
Linus's law, named after Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, states that "given enough eyeballs, all bugss are shallow". More formally: "Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone." The rule was formulated and named by Eric S. Raymond in his essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar.

Wikipedia can be viewed as an attempt to implement this principle in the realm of encyclopedia writing.

Linus Torvalds himself also describes a notion as Linus's Law in the prologue to the book The Hacker Ethic: Linus's Law says that all of our motivations fall into three basic categories. More important, progress is about going through those very same things as "phases" in a process of evolution, a matter of passing from one category to the next. The categories, in order, are "survival", "social life", and "entertainment".

See also