From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Sep 13 08:05:06 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 29C1816A4BF for ; Sat, 13 Sep 2003 08:05:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mta9.adelphia.net (mta9.adelphia.net [68.168.78.199]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2541C43FD7 for ; Sat, 13 Sep 2003 08:05:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from potentialtech.com ([24.53.179.151]) by mta9.adelphia.net (InterMail vM.5.01.05.32 201-253-122-126-132-20030307) with ESMTP id <20030913150506.EVXX10601.mta9.adelphia.net@potentialtech.com>; Sat, 13 Sep 2003 11:05:06 -0400 Message-ID: <3F633220.7050401@potentialtech.com> Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 11:05:04 -0400 From: Bill Moran User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.3) Gecko/20030429 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Liew Jay Sern References: <20030913093242.T94897@pinnacle.schulte.org> In-Reply-To: <20030913093242.T94897@pinnacle.schulte.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: bikeshed X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 13 Sep 2003 15:05:06 -0000 Liew Jay Sern wrote: > I missed BSDcon 03, what's a bikeshed got to do with anything, anyway? > (besides bikes). Let's see if I remember the story correctly: If you were building a nuclear reactor, your board of directors would likely agree with you on just about anything you tried to do, since a nuclear reactor is a complex, dangerous, difficult-to-build thing, that none of them wants to get into the dirty details, and there's enough for everyone to do anyway. If you were building a bikeshed, it's so simple, that having a number of people involved would cause endless arguments over things such as the color, or exact location of the bikeshed, since a bikeshed is simple enough that everyone understands it, and there's not really enough work for many people to be involved. The theory (I guess) being that people like to get involved. In a business atmosphere, the lesson is don't assign too many people to a project, it doesn't speed it up, it slows it down. In a volunteer project, where everyone is free to do what they want, it's too easy for too many people to focus on the easy parts, thus discussing petty details into the ground. Thus "building a bikeshed" has become a euphamism for discussing relatively unimportant details into the ground. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com