How many years can a tiny unbalanced parenthesis go unnoticed on a widely accessed Internet document, older than the World Wide Web itself ?

TL;DR

This paper investigates how long a small unbalanced parenthesis error can remain unnoticed in a widely accessed Internet document, revealing it can persist unnoticed for over twenty-six years, raising questions about open access and bug detection.

Contribution

It demonstrates that minor errors in important documents can go unnoticed for decades, challenging assumptions about open access and collective bug detection.

Findings

Unbalanced parenthesis remained unnoticed for over 26 years.

The study questions the effectiveness of open access in bug detection.

Highlights the need for better error detection in critical documents.

Abstract

We conducted an investigation to find when a mistake was introduced in a widely accessed Internet document, namely the RFC index. With great surprise, we discovered that a it may go unnoticed for a very long period, namely more that twenty-six years. This raises some questions to what does it mean to have open access and the meaning of Linus' laws that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow"