WikiPedia "entry":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus%27s_law

This was As originally formulated described in Eric Raymond's essay "The Cathedral and the Bazaar":http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/index.html . The relevant section is quoted below:

<i>Linus was behaving as though he believed something like this:

8. Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix obvious to someone.

Or, less formally, ``Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.'' I dub this: ``Linus's Law''.

My original formulation was that every problem ``will be transparent to somebody''. Linus demurred that the person who understands and fixes the problem is not necessarily or even usually the person who first characterizes it. ``Somebody finds the problem,'' he says, ``and somebody else understands it. And I'll go on record as saying that finding it is the bigger challenge.''</i>