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To be fair, the Lindy effect does imply that it's less likely for a decades old project to die soon than a newer one.
by mijoharas 3y ago
To be fair, the Lindy effect does imply that it's less likely for a decades old project to die soon than a newer one.
- eviks 3y agoit's not fair since the original comment said nothing of the sorts, and this effect is just a theory
- coldtea 3y agoThe "original comment" basically made the Lindy effect argument, stopping short of naming it explicitly: "The issue with all these efforts is whether they'll be sustained and maintained long term, or merely until the 1-2 maintainers lose interest. GNU coreutils on the other hand have been going for decades". So there's that. Many useful tools are "just theories", Occam's razor included.
- eviks 3y agoNope, "until the 1-2 maintainers lose interest" is a specific cause of project death, not a general observation that the risk is LOWER. Just like "a 40 years project dies because the 1-2 maintainers retire" is a cause of death for old projects would also be a similar risk, but just as useless for comparison. No need to try to fit everything into some simplistic theory as though it's a Procrustean bed > Many useful tools are "just theories" As are many harmful tools, and you haven't demonstrated that the Lindy law is useful
- sph 3y ago> To be fair, the Lindy effect does imply that it's less likely for a decades old project to die soon than a newer one. True, but doesn't that imply its opposite as well? A decade old project will probably die sooner than later, because 11+ year projects are rarer than 10 year ones. The Lindy effect can only be observed in comparison to something else, not to deduct how long a single project in and of itself will last. Which means, coreutils will probably last longer than this one, because it's been around 33 years vs 10.