Zawinski's law of software envelopment

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Zawinski's Law of Software Envelopment (also known as Zawinski's Law) relates the pressure of popularity to the phenomenon of software bloat:

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

Examples of the law in action include Emacs and Mozilla.

This law is attributed to Jamie Zawinski, who popularized it. It may have been inspired by the humorous Law of Software Development and Envelopment at MIT, which was posted on Usenet in 1989 by Greg Kuperberg, who wrote:

Every program in development at MIT expands until it can read mail.

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