Probably because of exactly that. > Royce’s 1970 paper, which is credited with “inventing” the model, actually identifies it so Royce can criticize it and sugg

Probably because of exactly that. > Royce’s 1970 paper, which is credited with “inventing” the model, actually identifies it so Royce can criticize it and suggest improvements. That means people were doing waterfall then, just maybe not calling it so. > Sadly, multiple generations of software developers have had to suffer through waterfall projects That means even after it being given the name "waterfall", "multiple generations" kept using it. This is making observations, coming up with a model that fits the observations, giving it a name, and arguing against it. This is definitely not a strawman as GP or the author of the post you linked seem to think, which is why it's being downvoted (I didn't btw).