Poul-Henning Kamp recounts the origin story of the "bikeshed" concept, coined from a 1999 email he wrote about how open source projects disproportionately focus on trivial matters while neglecting critical issues. The term spread through the FreeBSD community, was adopted by the Subversion project, and eventually became a widely recognized principle in FOSS governance.
Background
The bikeshed effect, also known as Lindy's law of triviality, describes how groups give disproportionate weight to trivial issues while overlooking more significant ones. This article is a personal account from PHK, a prominent FreeBSD committer.
- Source
- Lobsters
- Published
- Sep 19, 2026 at 03:46 AM
- Score
- 6.0 / 10