Linus’s Law
E210070
Linus’s Law is the open-source software development principle that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” emphasizing the power of many reviewers to quickly find and fix defects.
All labels observed (2)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow | 1 |
| Linus’s Law canonical | 1 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T1887552 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Linus’s Law Context triple: [The Cathedral and the Bazaar, coinOrPopularize, Linus’s Law]
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A.
Cunningham's Law
Cunningham's Law is an internet adage stating that the best way to get the right answer online is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
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B.
Wirth’s law
Wirth’s law is the observation that software tends to become slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster, often negating the benefits of improved computing performance.
-
C.
Kluge's law
Kluge's law is a proposed sound law in Proto-Germanic historical linguistics that explains the development of certain geminate consonants from earlier consonant clusters.
-
D.
Postel’s law
Postel’s law is a design principle in computing and networking that advises systems to be conservative in what they send and liberal in what they accept, promoting robustness and interoperability.
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E.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar is a highly influential essay and book on open-source software development that contrasts centralized, top-down programming models with decentralized, collaborative approaches.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Linus’s Law Target entity description: Linus’s Law is the open-source software development principle that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” emphasizing the power of many reviewers to quickly find and fix defects.
-
A.
Cunningham's Law
Cunningham's Law is an internet adage stating that the best way to get the right answer online is not to ask a question, but to post the wrong answer.
-
B.
Wirth’s law
Wirth’s law is the observation that software tends to become slower more quickly than hardware becomes faster, often negating the benefits of improved computing performance.
-
C.
Kluge's law
Kluge's law is a proposed sound law in Proto-Germanic historical linguistics that explains the development of certain geminate consonants from earlier consonant clusters.
-
D.
Postel’s law
Postel’s law is a design principle in computing and networking that advises systems to be conservative in what they send and liberal in what they accept, promoting robustness and interoperability.
-
E.
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar is a highly influential essay and book on open-source software development that contrasts centralized, top-down programming models with decentralized, collaborative approaches.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (45)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf |
adage
ⓘ
aphorism ⓘ open-source software development principle ⓘ software development principle ⓘ |
| appliesTo |
collaborative software development
ⓘ
open-source software projects ⓘ |
| associatedWithDevelopmentModel | bazaar model of software development ⓘ |
| associatedWithMovement | open-source software movement ⓘ |
| assumes |
availability of source code
ⓘ
large and active developer community ⓘ many users acting as co-developers ⓘ |
| coinedBy |
Eric Raymond
ⓘ
surface form:
Eric S. Raymond
|
| contextOfOrigin | discussion of open-source vs proprietary development models ⓘ |
| contrastedWith | cathedral model of software development ⓘ |
| emphasizes |
importance of many reviewers
ⓘ
peer review of source code ⓘ rapid bug discovery ⓘ rapid bug fixing ⓘ |
| firstDescribedInMedium | essay ⓘ |
| firstDescribedInWork | The Cathedral and the Bazaar ⓘ |
| hasAlternativeFormulation | Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. ⓘ |
| hasCriticism |
coordination and communication overhead can increase with many contributors
ⓘ
eyeballs must be skilled to be effective ⓘ not all projects have enough qualified reviewers ⓘ some bugs remain hard even with many reviewers ⓘ |
| hasFullName |
Linus’s Law
self-linksurface differs
ⓘ
surface form:
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow
|
| hasShortDescription | Principle that many reviewers make software bugs easier to find and fix ⓘ |
| influencedBy | Linux kernel development practices ⓘ |
| influences |
advocacy for public code review
ⓘ
arguments for open-source development ⓘ software engineering best practices ⓘ |
| namedAfter | Linus Torvalds ⓘ |
| relatedNamedEntity |
Eric Raymond
ⓘ
surface form:
Eric S. Raymond
Linus Torvalds ⓘ Linux kernel ⓘ The Cathedral and the Bazaar ⓘ |
| relatesToConcept |
bug detection
ⓘ
code transparency ⓘ crowdsourced debugging ⓘ peer review ⓘ quality assurance in software ⓘ software reliability ⓘ |
| usedAsArgumentFor |
large-scale community involvement in debugging
ⓘ
releasing source code to the public ⓘ transparent development processes ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Linus’s Law Description of subject: Linus’s Law is the open-source software development principle that “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow,” emphasizing the power of many reviewers to quickly find and fix defects.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
this entity surface form:
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow