Top Linux Developers Losing the Will To Code?

E5Rebel noted that Don Marti has a piece that talks about "Core Linux developers are finding themselves managing and checking, rather than coding, as the number of kernel contributors grows and the contributor network becomes more complex."

Comments

a good or bad thing?

[brunascle]

that's odd. the linux.com article covering the same event made it sound like the kernel team thought it was a good thing that there were more developers, and the work was more spread out.

The Mythical Man Month

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Described this in 1975. As you add more people to a project, communication takes up more time than coding. From Wikipedia:

Assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later, due to the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project, as well as the increased communication overhead. When N people have to communicate among themselves (without a hierarchy), as N increases, their output M decreases and can even become negative (i.e. the total work remaining at the end of a day is greater than the total work that had been remaining at the beginning of that day, such as when many bugs are created).

* Group Intercommunication Formula: n(n 1) / 2
* Example: 50 developers -> 50(50 1) / 2 = 1225 channels of communication