Cognitive Scaffold

Preparing your thinking workspace

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MENTAL MODEL · M5676

Linus's Law

Linus's Law
SystemsHigh supportComplexity Science
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Updated 2026-08-05

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INTRODUCTION

English translation pending.

CORE DEFINITION

Formulated by Eric Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, drawing on Linus Torvalds's practice of releasing early and often, the law holds that with a sufficiently large and diverse group of reviewers, defects become easy to find and fix because some reviewer will recognize each problem. The core claim is that open, broad scrutiny outperforms closed review for defect detection. The qualification is that reviewers must be numerous, independent, and competent, and core maintainers must still decide what gets merged.

SCAFFOLDING EFFECT

psychology

Reduce cognitive load

- Use Open Review: Expose code, plans, or documents to many reviewers rather than a single gatekeeper. - Use Low-Friction Reporting: Make it easy to file issues so problems surface quickly. - Use Reviewer Diversity: Recruit reviewers with different backgrounds, since shallow bugs differ by perspective.

anchor

Anchor fast decisions

Finding a defect requires someone to recognize it, and recognition depends on prior experience that varies across individuals. The chance that at least one reviewer matches a given bug rises quickly as the number of independent reviewers grows, so coverage increases without any single person becoming more capable. Fixing is then cheap because the reporter has already localized the problem, which is why breadth matters more than depth in detection.

MINIMUM ACTION

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Source support: Explicit

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    en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus's_lawZH · Explicit
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