On Wed, 2008-10-29 at 13:31 -0400, Alan Cox wrote:
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 07:31:47AM -0500, David G. Mackay wrote:
> > Design by committee just doesn't work.
>
> So all of those ISO and IEEE standards are worthless?
Most of the good ones have a design list a few names long. Same with the
good RFC stuff. May have had 100 people twiddle with the spec but only a tiny
few wrote it. Compare IPv6 an OSI Level 4 ...
Sure, but the fact is that design by committee can work. There's a book, "We Are
Smarter Than Me"
by Barry Liebert, Jon Specter, and a cast of thousands. It gives cases
where group input has been highly productive. For that matter, how
about the linux kernel? Group dynamics obviously forms a complex
system, which, often enough spirals off into chaos. Every now and then,
however, it does work.
Dave