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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