<!--#include virtual="/server/header.html" -->
<!-- Parent-Version: 1.77 1.96 -->
<!-- This page is derived from /server/standards/boilerplate.html -->
<!--#set var="TAGS" value="essays cultural ns" -->
<!--#set var="DISABLE_TOP_ADDENDUM" value="yes" -->
<title>The Bug Nobody is Allowed to Understand
- GNU Project - Free Software Foundation</title>
<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/po/bug-nobody-allowed-to-understand.translist" -->
<!--#include virtual="/server/banner.html" -->
<!--#include virtual="/philosophy/ph-breadcrumb.html" -->
<!--GNUN: OUT-OF-DATE NOTICE-->
<!--#include virtual="/server/top-addendum.html" -->
<div class="article reduced-width">
<h2>The Bug Nobody is Allowed to Understand</h2>

<p>by

<address class="byline">by <a href="http://www.stallman.org/">Richard Stallman</a></p> href="https://www.stallman.org/">Richard
Stallman</a></address>

<p>In the 1980s, proprietary software users discovered the problem of
<em>the bug that nobody is allowed to understand</em>. When a problem
occurs in the interaction of multiple proprietary software packages
with different developers, none of them is allowed to study the source
code of all the pertinent programs. As a result, none of them can
understand the bad interaction between them, and the bug is never
fixed except by accident.</p>

<p>According to <a
href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/joris-luyendijk-banking-blog/2012/may/30/former-it-salesman-voices-of-finance">
href="https://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/joris-luyendijk-banking-blog/2012/may/30/former-it-salesman-voices-of-finance">
this article</a>, a similar problem now occurs between
multiple instances of
<a href="/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html">Service as a Software Substitute</a>.</p>
</div>

</div><!-- for id="content", starts in the include above -->
<!--#include virtual="/server/footer.html" -->
<div id="footer"> id="footer" role="contentinfo">
<div class="unprintable">

<p>Please send general FSF & GNU inquiries to
<a href="mailto:gnu@gnu.org"><gnu@gnu.org></a>.
There are also <a href="/contact/">other ways to contact</a>
the FSF.  Broken links and other corrections or suggestions can be sent
to <a href="mailto:webmasters@gnu.org"><webmasters@gnu.org></a>.</p>

<p><!-- TRANSLATORS: Ignore the original text in this paragraph,
        replace it with the translation of these two:

        We work hard and do our best to provide accurate, good quality
        translations.  However, we are not exempt from imperfection.
        Please send your comments and general suggestions in this regard
        to <a href="mailto:web-translators@gnu.org">
        <web-translators@gnu.org></a>.</p>

        <p>For information on coordinating and submitting contributing translations of
        our web pages, see <a
        href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
        README</a>. -->
Please see the <a
href="/server/standards/README.translations.html">Translations
README</a> for information on coordinating and submitting contributing translations
of this article.</p>
</div>

<!-- Regarding copyright, in general, standalone pages (as opposed to
     files generated as part of manuals) on the GNU web server should
     be under CC BY-ND 4.0.  Please do NOT change or remove this
     without talking with the webmasters or licensing team first.
     Please make sure the copyright date is consistent with the
     document.  For web pages, it is ok to list just the latest year the
     document was modified, or published.

     If you wish to list earlier years, that is ok too.
     Either "2001, 2002, 2003" or "2001-2003" are ok for specifying
     years, as long as each year in the range is in fact a copyrightable
     year, i.e., a year in which the document was published (including
     being publicly visible on the web or in a revision control system).

     There is more detail about copyright years in the GNU Maintainers
     Information document, www.gnu.org/prep/maintain. -->

<p>Copyright © 2014, 2015 2012, 2021 Free Software Foundation, Inc.</p>

<p>This page is licensed under a <a rel="license"
href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">Creative
Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.</p>

<!--#include virtual="/server/bottom-notes.html" -->

<p class="unprintable">Updated:
<!-- timestamp start -->
$Date: 2021/11/01 13:30:50 $
<!-- timestamp end -->
</p>
</div>
</div>
</div><!-- for class="inner", starts in the banner include -->
</body>
</html>