Talk:Zawinski's law of software envelopment

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I do not know whether I was the first person to come up with the joke about all programs expanding to read mail. I can confirm that I thought of it independently when I was a student at Harvard. (So it must have been some time between 1983 and 1987.) At the time I had Emacs and readnews in mind. The only reason that I picked MIT is that it was easy to suppose, at least for a joke, that geeky Internet software was typically developed at MIT. (It was especially easy to suppose at Harvard!)

Greg Kuperberg 01:45, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I heard Jamie utter this phrase before 1989. I worked with him from 1986 until sometime in early to mid 1989 after which point I had very little contact with him. 65.121.28.16 25 August 2006


Slashdotted! Prepare for vandalism. :)

slashdotters dont vandalize hahaha yeah right


[edit] Is Google a useful example?

A past edit by 87.196.60.115 removed Google from the list of examples (Mozilla, Emacs), with the comment google is not a program. I actually think Google is a useful example. I admit that it isn't a program in the traditional (Web 1.0?) sense, but the two products GMail and Google Desktop both both do mail. With the changing meaning of 'program', I wonder what other wikipedian's views are on this? I also appeal to the name of the law referring to 'software' giving it a very general flavour. DLeonard 05:24, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

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