So your argument is either that Linux didn't have many eyes on it, or that it taking 10 years and an intense study by Google to find it is shallow. In either case, that's effectively saying that the maxim is so loose as to be completely meaningless (i.e. "broken").
Even throwing out the fact that equivalent closed source software has a stupendous amount of money spent on code reviews, the open source model makes those reviews possible. It doesn't necessarily make them likely. That is a very important difference, theoretical eyes make no bugs shallow.
> I hope you and the grandparent get your horses into rehab once you finish your ride
Please refrain from making condescending, smug comments like this here. They do not in any way contribute to the debate.
> Please refrain from making condescending, smug comments like this here. They do not in any way contribute to the debate.
HN today (over the course of previous weeks) is very quick with broad-swipe sensationalist statements, at least this is the sentiment I'm getting:
— The law of enough eyeballs is disproved by a decade-old bug!
— Sleep deprivation is used for some depression cases, therefore, let's banish sleep and crank all-nighters!
— SOLID is obsolete and debunked, and moreover, the old boomer Robert Martin defends it, so let's banish SOLID!
Repeat ad nauseam about any "mainstream" viewpoint or paradigm. It's getting old very quickly. Thus my abrasive passage that you quoted.
I'd like to see instead a more elaborate discussion about limitations of this observation (about eyeballs and bugs) which has proved itself quite more than once, rather than a sweeping statement. Right now the thread reads like a call to abolish all Newtonian mechanics and using relativistic calculations for everything, just because Newtonian physics got "debunked".
I'd argue that maybe a codebase can grow so much that no number of human eyeballs, even using eyeball enhancers like fuzzing and analysis tools similar to Coverity or PVS Studio, will ever bring all the bugs to the surface (and of course there can be design flaws undetectable with tools). And maybe realizing this should alter the way we design complex systems that should be as bug-free as it gets.
Even throwing out the fact that equivalent closed source software has a stupendous amount of money spent on code reviews, the open source model makes those reviews possible. It doesn't necessarily make them likely. That is a very important difference, theoretical eyes make no bugs shallow.
> I hope you and the grandparent get your horses into rehab once you finish your ride
Please refrain from making condescending, smug comments like this here. They do not in any way contribute to the debate.