prov. The rule that the organization of the software and
the organization of the software team will be congruent; originally
stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll
get a 4-pass compiler".
Melvin Conway, an early proto-hacker who wrote an assembler for the
Burroughs 220 called SAVE. The name `SAVE' didn't stand for
anything; it was just that you lost fewer card decks and listings
because they all had SAVE written on them.
