bug-nobody-allowed-to-understand.html (4310B)
1 <!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" --> 2 <!-- Parent-Version: 1.96 --> 3 <!-- This page is derived from /server/standards/boilerplate.html --> 4 <!--#set var="TAGS" value="essays cultural ns" --> 5 <!--#set var="DISABLE_TOP_ADDENDUM" value="yes" --> 6 <title>The Bug Nobody is Allowed to Understand 7 - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title> 8 <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/bug-nobody-allowed-to-understand.translist" --> 9 <!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" --> 10 <!--#include virtual="/philosophy/ph-breadcrumb.html" --> 11 <!--GNUN: OUT-OF-DATE NOTICE--> 12 <!--#include virtual="/server/top-addendum.html" --> 13 <div class="article reduced-width"> 14 <h2>The Bug Nobody is Allowed to Understand</h2> 15 16 <address class="byline">by <a href="https://www.stallman.org/">Richard 17 Stallman</a></address> 18 19 <p>In the 1980s, proprietary software users discovered the problem of 20 <em>the bug that nobody is allowed to understand</em>. When a problem 21 occurs in the interaction of multiple proprietary software packages 22 with different developers, none of them is allowed to study the source 23 code of all the pertinent programs. As a result, none of them can 24 understand the bad interaction between them, and the bug is never 25 fixed except by accident.</p> 26 27 <p>According to <a 28 href="https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/joris-luyendijk-banking-blog/2012/may/30/former-it-salesman-voices-of-finance"> 29 this article</a>, a similar problem now occurs between 30 multiple instances of 31 <a href="/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html">Service as a Software Substitute</a>.</p> 32 </div> 33 34 </div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above --> 35 <!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" --> 36 <div id="footer" role="contentinfo"> 37 <div class="unprintable"> 38 39 <p>Please send general FSF & GNU inquiries to 40 <a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org"><gnu@gnu.org></a>. 41 There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a> 42 the FSF. Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent 43 to <a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org"><webmasters@gnu.org></a>.</p> 44 45 <p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph, 46 replace it with the translation of these two: 47 48 We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality 49 translations. However, we are not exempt from imperfection. 50 Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard 51 to <a href="mailto:web-translators@gnu.org"> 52 <web-translators@gnu.org></a>.</p> 53 54 <p>For information on coordinating and contributing translations of 55 our web pages, see <a 56 href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations 57 README</a>. --> 58 Please see the <a 59 href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations 60 README</a> for information on coordinating and contributing translations 61 of this article.</p> 62 </div> 63 64 <!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to 65 files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should 66 be under CC BY-ND 4.0. Please do NOT change or remove this 67 without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first. 68 Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the 69 document. For web pages, it is ok to list just the latest year the 70 document was modified, or published. 71 72 If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too. 73 Either "2001, 2002, 2003" or "2001-2003" are ok for specifying 74 years, as long as each year in the range is in fact a copyrightable 75 year, i.e., a year in which the document was published (including 76 being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system). 77 78 There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers 79 Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. --> 80 81 <p>Copyright © 2012, 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.</p> 82 83 <p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license" 84 href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative 85 Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p> 86 87 <!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" --> 88 89 <p class="unprintable">Updated: 90 <!-- timestamp start --> 91 $Date: 2021/09/02 08:55:39 $ 92 <!-- timestamp end --> 93 </p> 94 </div> 95 </div><!-- for class="inner", starts in the banner include --> 96 </body> 97 </html>