---
created_at: '2016-09-19T17:29:08.000Z'
title: Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is? (1999)
url: http://bikeshed.org/
author: shockwavecs
points: 106
story_text: 
comment_text: 
num_comments: 52
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1474306148
_tags:
- story
- author_shockwavecs
- story_12533079
objectID: '12533079'

---
# Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is?

[![](bikeshed.png)](/)

From
[freebsd.org/doc/en\_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html\#bikeshed-painting](http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#bikeshed-painting);  
see also
[phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed.html](http://phk.freebsd.dk/sagas/bikeshed.html)
for historical background.

> "The really, really short answer is that you should not. The somewhat
> longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a
> bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just
> because you do not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a
> metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature
> just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that
> the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to
> the complexity of the change."

(If you don't like the way we painted this bikeshed, try
[bikeshedding.io](http://bikeshedding.io/), or the minimalist
[shed.bike](https://shed.bike/). Or set up your own? That's the
spirit\!)

    Subject: A bike shed (any colour will do) on greener grass...
    From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@freebsd.org>
    Date: Sat, 02 Oct 1999 16:14:10 +0200
    Message-ID: <18238.938873650@critter.freebsd.dk>
    Sender: phk@critter.freebsd.dk
    Bcc: Blind Distribution List: ;
    MIME-Version: 1.0
    
    
    [bcc'ed to committers, hackers]
    
    My last pamphlet was sufficiently well received that I was not
    scared away from sending another one, and today I have the time
    and inclination to do so.
    
    I've had a little trouble with deciding on the right distribution
    of this kind of stuff, this time it is bcc'ed to committers and
    hackers, that is probably the best I can do.  I'm not subscribed
    to hackers myself but more on that later.
    
    The thing which have triggered me this time is the "sleep(1) should
    do fractional seconds" thread, which have pestered our lives for
    many days now, it's probably already a couple of weeks, I can't
    even be bothered to check.
    
    To those of you who have missed this particular thread: Congratulations.
    
    It was a proposal to make sleep(1) DTRT if given a non-integer
    argument that set this particular grass-fire off.  I'm not going
    to say anymore about it than that, because it is a much smaller
    item than one would expect from the length of the thread, and it
    has already received far more attention than some of the *problems*
    we have around here.
    
    The sleep(1) saga is the most blatant example of a bike shed
    discussion we have had ever in FreeBSD.  The proposal was well
    thought out, we would gain compatibility with OpenBSD and NetBSD,
    and still be fully compatible with any code anyone ever wrote.
    
    Yet so many objections, proposals and changes were raised and
    launched that one would think the change would have plugged all
    the holes in swiss cheese or changed the taste of Coca Cola or
    something similar serious.
    
    "What is it about this bike shed ?" Some of you have asked me.
    
    It's a long story, or rather it's an old story, but it is quite
    short actually.  C. Northcote Parkinson wrote a book in the early
    1960'ies, called "Parkinson's Law", which contains a lot of insight
    into the dynamics of management.
    
    You can find it on Amazon, and maybe also in your dads book-shelf,
    it is well worth its price and the time to read it either way,
    if you like Dilbert, you'll like Parkinson.
    
    Somebody recently told me that he had read it and found that only
    about 50% of it applied these days.  That is pretty darn good I
    would say, many of the modern management books have hit-rates a
    lot lower than that, and this one is 35+ years old.
    
    In the specific example involving the bike shed, the other vital
    component is an atomic power-plant, I guess that illustrates the
    age of the book.
    
    Parkinson shows how you can go in to the board of directors and
    get approval for building a multi-million or even billion dollar
    atomic power plant, but if you want to build a bike shed you will
    be tangled up in endless discussions.
    
    Parkinson explains that this is because an atomic plant is so vast,
    so expensive and so complicated that people cannot grasp it, and
    rather than try, they fall back on the assumption that somebody
    else checked all the details before it got this far.   Richard P.
    Feynmann gives a couple of interesting, and very much to the point,
    examples relating to Los Alamos in his books.
    
    A bike shed on the other hand.  Anyone can build one of those over
    a weekend, and still have time to watch the game on TV.  So no
    matter how well prepared, no matter how reasonable you are with
    your proposal, somebody will seize the chance to show that he is
    doing his job, that he is paying attention, that he is *here*.
    
    In Denmark we call it "setting your fingerprint".  It is about
    personal pride and prestige, it is about being able to point
    somewhere and say "There!  *I* did that."  It is a strong trait in
    politicians, but present in most people given the chance.  Just
    think about footsteps in wet cement.
    
    I bow my head in respect to the original proposer because he stuck
    to his guns through this carpet blanking from the peanut gallery,
    and the change is in our tree today.  I would have turned my back
    and walked away after less than a handful of messages in that
    thread.
    
    And that brings me, as I promised earlier, to why I am not subscribed
    to -hackers:
    
    I un-subscribed from -hackers several years ago, because I could
    not keep up with the email load.  Since then I have dropped off
    several other lists as well for the very same reason.
    
    And I still get a lot of email.  A lot of it gets routed to /dev/null
    by filters:  People like Brett Glass will never make it onto my
    screen, commits to documents in languages I don't understand
    likewise, commits to ports as such.  All these things and more go
    the winter way without me ever even knowing about it.
    
    But despite these sharp teeth under my mailbox I still get too much
    email.
    
    This is where the greener grass comes into the picture:
    
    I wish we could reduce the amount of noise in our lists and I wish
    we could let people build a bike shed every so often, and I don't
    really care what colour they paint it.
    
    The first of these wishes is about being civil, sensitive and 
    intelligent in our use of email.
    
    If I could concisely and precisely define a set of criteria for
    when one should and when one should not reply to an email so that
    everybody would agree and abide by it, I would be a happy man, but
    I am too wise to even attempt that.
    
    But let me suggest a few pop-up windows I would like to see
    mail-programs implement whenever people send or reply to email
    to the lists they want me to subscribe to:
    
          +------------------------------------------------------------+
          | Your email is about to be sent to several hundred thousand |
          | people, who will have to spend at least 10 seconds reading |
          | it before they can decide if it is interesting.  At least  |
          | two man-weeks will be spent reading your email.  Many of   |
          | the recipients will have to pay to download your email.    |
          |                                |
          | Are you absolutely sure that your email is of sufficient   |
          | importance to bother all these people ?                    |
          |                                |
          |                  [YES]  [REVISE]  [CANCEL]                 |
          +------------------------------------------------------------+
    
          +------------------------------------------------------------+
          | Warning:  You have not read all emails in this thread yet. |
          | Somebody else may already have said what you are about to  |
          | say in your reply.  Please read the entire thread before   |
          | replying to any email in it.                               |
          |                                |
          |              [CANCEL]                              |
          +------------------------------------------------------------+
    
          +------------------------------------------------------------+
          | Warning:  Your mail program have not even shown you the    |
          | entire message yet.  Logically it follows that you cannot  |
          | possibly have read it all and understood it.               |
          |                                |
          | It is not polite to reply to an email until you have       |
          | read it all and thought about it.              |
          |                                |
          | A cool off timer for this thread will prevent you from     |
          | replying to any email in this thread for the next one hour |
          |                                |
          |               [Cancel]                 |
          +------------------------------------------------------------+
    
          +------------------------------------------------------------+
          | You composed this email at a rate of more than N.NN cps    |
          | It is generally not possible to think and type at a rate   |
          | faster than A.AA cps, and therefore you reply is likely to |
          | incoherent, badly thought out and/or emotional.            |
          |                                |
          | A cool off timer will prevent you from sending any email   |
          | for the next one hour.                     |
          |                                |
          |               [Cancel]                 |
          +------------------------------------------------------------+
    
    The second part of my wish is more emotional.  Obviously, the
    capacities we had manning the unfriendly fire in the sleep(1)
    thread, despite their many years with the project, never cared
    enough to do this tiny deed, so why are they suddenly so enflamed
    by somebody else so much their junior doing it ?
    
    I wish I knew.
    
    I do know that reasoning will have no power to stop such "reactionaire
    conservatism".  It may be that these people are frustrated about
    their own lack of tangible contribution lately or it may be a bad
    case of "we're old and grumpy, WE know how youth should behave".
    
    Either way it is very unproductive for the project, but I have no
    suggestions for how to stop it.  The best I can suggest is to refrain
    from fuelling the monsters that lurk in the mailing lists:  Ignore
    them, don't answer them, forget they're there.
    
    I hope we can get a stronger and broader base of contributors in
    FreeBSD, and I hope we together can prevent the grumpy old men
    and the Brett Glasses of the world from chewing them up, spitting
    them out and scaring them away before they ever get a leg to the 
    ground.
    
    For the people who have been lurking out there, scared away from
    participating by the gargoyles:  I can only apologise and encourage
    you to try anyway, this is not the way I want the environment in
    the project to be.
    
    Poul-Henning
