The Essay is Done.

Eric S. Raymond esr at thyrsus.com
Mon Sep 20 15:39:37 UTC 1999


Jacques Chester <thunda at manor.downunder.net.au>:
> It's over. I've finally done it.

I'm disappointed in what I see here.  You asked me to review the draft,
and I did, and I sent you this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm not familiar enough with the technical literature on LODR to form
a firm judgement on whether Brooks's Law is equivalent to LODR.  My
gut reaction is one of skepticism.

I also want to point out that I do not assert anywhere in my writings
that open-source development is immune to LODR -- for the very good reason
that I would coinsider any such claim patently ridiculous!

I'll put the case more positively.  I strongly suspect the following things:

1. Bazaar-mode development *is* susceptible to LODR effects, but (in your
   own words) "happens to be far more 'scaleable' than the traditional
   cathedral".  This, in fact, is almost exactly how I would have phrased
   my own answer if the question had come up before.

2. Brooks's Law is not precisely *equivalent* to LODR, but is rather a special
   case of it involving *particular* nonlinear scaling phenomena.  Accordingly,
   one may assert that the bazaar mode repeals Brooks's Law without making
   any commitment about the applicability of the LODR in general.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Did you just ignore this?  I see no integration of it anywhere in your essay.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Such are a well regulated militia, composed of the freeholders,
citizen and husbandman, who take up arms to preserve their property,
as individuals, and their rights as freemen.
        -- "M.T. Cicero", in a newspaper letter of 1788 touching the "militia" 
            referred to in the Second Amendment to the Constitution.



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