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non-principles:zawinski_s_law

Zawinski's Law

Variants and Alternative Names

Rule

Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.

Description

  • Zawinski's Law is about software bloat. Software tends to evolve in a way that continuously more and more features are added.
  • There are nevertheless plenty of programs which cannot read mail and never will. So the law is an exaggerated tendency.

Rationale

Why Not a Principle?

Zawinski's Law is rather the description of an effect than an engineering advice. It does not tell which solutions are good and which are bad.

Origin

See Also

Examples

Emacs, Mozilla, Opera, …

Description Status

Further Reading

Discussion

Discuss this wiki article and the non-principle on the corresponding talk page.

non-principles/zawinski_s_law.txt · Last modified: 2013-08-09 22:04 by christian