Talk:Linus's Law

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[edit] Apostrophe

Shouldn't "Linus's Law" be "Linus' Law" ?

No, because the second S is pronounced - David Gerard 00:16, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

What? If it is pronounced, then it shouldn't be. Learn english you fool. - Graham, March 2006.

"Linus's" is correct, or preferred if you prefer. "Linus'" is possessive plural and would be correct only if his name were Linu and there were more than one of him. I don't believe this to be the case. ;) Jerry Kindall 15:35, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I may be wrong, but I believe that as his name ends with an S, it should be "Linus' Law". Richmd 14:27, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

See Stokes' law as an example. Richmd 14:31, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the current name is correct. In English, singular nouns are treated the same for the genitive case, whether they end in s or not: the genitive is formed by appending the ending 's. It is for plural regular nouns that the terminating s is not used. See Saxon genitive. That other article should be moved to correct its name, I will do so now. Capi 15:59, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually a redirect from Stokes's Law already exists, that points to Stokes' law. I've just RfDed the redirect, so as to be able to move the main article to its correct name. Capi 16:21, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Are you going to put in a redirect request for Achilles' heel? Fowler's Modern English Usage ISBN 0198691157 has an article on "possesive puzzles", the jist of which is that --s' used to be the norm and is still retained in poetic and reverential contexts; otherwise add the s, so Linus's Law. [OT: Stokes' Law--it predates the 's usage, and is to some extent reverential.] --Philbarker 16:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Fowler's is great - but I believe ESR wrote it, "Linus' Law", in The Cathedral ... - does that help, or just confuse everything?--Shtove 20:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Don't believe, go read it: http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ --Philbarker 21:38, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I see. That's the current HTML version - I read something earlier (probably the original), so maybe he read Fowler's (American spelling version) in the meantime! Cheers.--Shtove 23:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't know of any American spelling version of Fowler's, but I can assure that the article I cite above is from the British/English version of Fowler's. Perhaps the version of Cathedral you read had been edited by someone who hadn't read any Fowler. Anyway, can I take it that we're agreed on Linus's? --Philbarker 18:21, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I'd say Fowler would have been horrified by an American spelling version of his book. The version of Cathedral I read (I've lost the link) was on an ESR webpage - the whole thing has been revised and updated quite a bit. Anyway, no disagreement from me.--Shtove 20:50, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

This article is about the law of linus torvads and how it affects software development .. please donot post Non NPOV . Leningrad

[edit] The ocular effect

Is this derived from what Linus said? Or is this "ocular effect" older than Linus? Either way, I thought it was worth sticking in this article. --DavidCary 17:06, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

For future reference, since the term "ocular effect" (as something conceptually similar to Linus' Law) is not yet popular enough, I will leave this link describing it. Nathan J. Yoder 08:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Keeping criticism without a rebuttal is not NPOV

The rebuttal of the pointed-out criticisms was removed by Njyoder with this edit. I don't believe the way the article is now is NPOV, though. If criticism is presented, the other side should have a chance as well.

I have made an effort to revive the rebuttal, in a way which I hope will be more acceptable to everyone. Feel free to improve it, but I don't think it should be flat out removed. Capi 05:13, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wiki systems

Don't most open wikis (including Wikipedia) use this law as a basis? Should we mention this? - Kookykman|(t)e

I think it is significant, however I also believe it has more impact in its obviousness than it would were it stated acutely. But just the same something along the lines of: "Wikimedia projects, such as Wikipedia, are examples of development that has embraced Linus's Law" might have a positive impact on the reader. Can somebody improve that statement? 199.80.154.88 19:16, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge or link needed

Many eyes fallacy should be either merged into, or linked from, the Criticism section of the accompanying article.
--Jerzy•t 16:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mathematical interpretation

This para is awkwardly phrased - I suspect it was written by the Italian guy whose webpage it links to. Don't know enough to fix it.--Shtove 20:36, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The Criticism section is also very awkward. It's full of run-on sentences and fragments. Pimlottc 09:20, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Not only is it awkwardly phrased, but it provides neither more information nor more clarity---and those should be the only motivating reasons to introduce pseudo-mathematical terminology to a non-mathematical discussion. Certainly, any elementary school student who's just learned what an algebraic variable is can attempt a "mathematical interpretation" of almost anything, but that doesn't make it math, and doesn't make it useful. I'm deleting the section. 69.250.43.106 13:37, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, and I love the "can be shown that..." part. The author of this section ought to spend a few years studying the notion of mathematical proof and a copy of Mythical Man Month before signing-on to his AOL account again. Sorry to be harsh, but this is the kind of garbage that typifies the faux-intellectual "blogosphere" (gag). Why can't we just block all users/IPs who attempt to link to blogger.com/livejournal/myspace/etc pages? 69.250.43.106 13:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Relationship to Brook's Law

I think it is important to note that Linus's Law was a response to Brooks law as the difference between the Cathedral and Bazaar models of OSS development, if not a philosophy for overcoming brooks law.

Also, something that has changed since the adoption of Brook's law and Linus's law is the stress for the necessity in open source projects for conforming to coding standards (meaning code that should do the same thing should look the same across programmers, despite the fact this is NOT done by nature, or hardly simple). That, and the stress for "extreme" code documentation. Many large projects that adopt a bazaar model, specifically Mozilla, frequently reject code for poorly standardized programming technique in addition to poorly documented code.

This "standardization" reduces the effects of brooks law by keeping OSS developers "up-to-date" with projects in general without needing to know specifics of a particular project (a major cause for initial communications overhead).

This is the foundation for Linus's Law to have its desired affect. Without that premise, it is merely an ideology.

Hopefully the above can be used to correct some of the many problems mentioned above in the criticism section.

199.80.154.88 19:06, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Other usages"

Do we need to add a section every time Torvalds makes a joke on a mailing list about Linus's Law number n, or do we have to demonstrate some kind of notability here? Marnanel (talk) 02:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)