Re: Fwd: Wall Street article on a new Cooperative

Ian Lance Taylor <[email protected]> wrote:
> "Forrest J. Cavalier III" <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> > (You see I tend to discount the "many eyeballs" value of releasing software
> > that ESR writes about.  I've seen too many problems in OSS persist
> > for too long to think there is much measurable value.)
> 
> "Many eyeballs" helps find the problem.  It doesn't generally help fix
> the problem.  Personally, I think that finding the problem does have a
> lot of value.

Which problem?

I'm of the opinion that "many eyeballs" helps more with SOME kinds
of problems than others.  People are willing to give me feedback on
what features they would like and what they want to use.  People
also give me feedback on some obviously broken things.  I also get
(mostly unintentional) feedback on what people find confusing.

However I don't generally get audits of my code.  From comments on
this list, other people don't either.  If it _seems_ to work, most
people take that at face value and don't ask hard questions.

Cheers,
Ben