[GoLUG] Cunningham's Law

[Kyle Terrien]

On Tue, Oct 15, 2024 at 05:37:10PM -0700, Syeed Ali wrote:
> Although I didn't do the full legwork to determine its source outside
> of the circle-citation that is the internet, 2010 at least has the idea
> on the internet, so the idea is in existence at that time.
> 
> There is the claim it is around the USENET era, and I'm not looking
> into that.

I can put a lower bound on that.  The phrase “Cunningham’s Law” is
*not* present in version 4.4.7 of the Jargon File (Eric Raymond),
published 29 Dec 2003 [1].

Cunningham was famous for his Web wiki, and Web came after the USENET
era.  So, it is very unlikely that the phrase was from the USENET era.
(Although I am sure they had an equivalent phrase that meant the same
thing.)

--Kyle

[1]: http://catb.org/jargon/html/online-preface.html

-- 
[*] Kyle Terrien
    Containerizing chaos to get to the root of the problem.
    https://terren.us/