Brooks's Law - Open Source Software Development

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.

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