The point Kropotkin was trying to make about power relationships is developed further by the 'SNAFU Principle': "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth." Creative teamwork utterly depends on true communication and is thus very seriously hindered by the presence of power relationships.

Enjoyment predicts efficiency. ... Joy, humor, and playfulness are indeed assets; it was not mainly for the alliteration that I wrote of "happy hordes" above, and it is no mere joke that the Linux mascot is a cuddly, neotenous penguin. It may well turn out that one of the most important effects of open source's success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work.

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".

But I also believed there was a certain critical complexity above which a more centralized, a priori approach was required. I believed that the most important software (operating systems and really large tools like the Emacs programming editor) needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no beta to be released before its time. Linus Torvalds's style of development-release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity-came as a surprise.