I wish we could reduce the amount of noise in [online conversations] and I wish we could let people build a bike shed every so often, and I don’t really care what colour they paint it.
Poul-Henning Kamp, 02 Oct 1999, FreeBSD Mail Archives
Parkinsonexplains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast, so expensiveand so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and rather than try,they fall back on the assumption that somebody else checked all thedetails before it got this far. Richard P. Feynmann gives a couple ofinteresting, and very much to the point, examples relating to LosAlamos in his books.A bike shed on the other hand. Anyone can build one of those overa weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV. So no matterhow well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with your proposal,somebody will seize the chance to show that he is doing his job, thathe is paying attention, that he is *here*.
Poul-Henning Kamp, 02 Oct 1999, FreeBSD Mail Archives
I highly recommend reading the whole email.
Yesterday, Myk Melez sent this to the Bugzilla developer mailing list with the message, “I happened upon a message today about OSS project dynamics that seems like it would be insightful and useful reading for the Bugzilla development community.”
I love it when I see people working on atomic plants or bike sheds. We can all be careful to focus, think, design and do, when it is so much easier to be lazy or distracted and think and talk and talk.
technorati tags:open source, particate, collaborate, fool’s wisdom, community, communicate, design, do, actualize, execute, hubris, lifehack
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