Monday, July 27, 2026 Strategy, technology, media, and social systems

I Think

Sorin Adam Matei

Analysis, research, maps, and essays from Sorin Adam Matei.

“Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” How can you find a page number for a direct citation if you do not have the print version of the book?

A grad student of mine and I were working on a paper when we realized that we have THAT citation management problem on our hands. We needed to cite the specific page number for Raymond’s famous citation “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” Neither of us had a printed copy of the book, just some electronic files of the initial manifesto, published, if I am not mistaken, in First Monday. Google books saves the day. The 2001 edition of The Cathedral and the Bazaar is available in limited preview through Google Books. Although you cannot read the entire book, you can search for any phrase or word it contains and you will get the context where it occurs, with a page snippet and page number. With a simple “bugs shallow” search, I found all 4 instances in the book where the two words occur next to each other. I chose page 30, which contains the most elegant formulation of the famous phrase. Problem solved. (You can also copy and paste a little bit of code to drop the snipped on your blog, as I did below).

PS: You can do the same with Amazon.com’s Search Inside feature, although you cannot link to the citation or embed it in your blog or website.

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