Open Source Software Development
While open source projects rarely have schedules, nonetheless they can reach a state in which they are called "late" by their sponsors, participants, and users. In such a case, Brooks's law ("adding manpower to a late software project makes it later") surely applies, for exactly the reasons that Brooks enumerates: time for the new developers to become productive and increased communication overhead. In addition, unless there are strict controls, newcomers may reduce the productivity of experienced developers by checking in buggy or inappropriate changes, which then have to be backed out.
Read more about this topic: Brooks's Law
Famous quotes containing the words open, source and/or development:
“A safe but sometimes chilly way of recalling the past is to force open a crammed drawer. If you are searching for anything in particular you don’t find it, but something falls out at the back that is often more interesting.”
—J.M. (James Matthew)
“The source of all life and knowledge is in man and woman, and the source of all living is in the interchange and the meeting and mingling of these two: man-life and woman-life, man-knowledge and woman-knowledge, man-being and woman-being.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)