SturgeonsRevelation™

Ninety percent of everything is crud.

This is already documented on both Wikipedia and Tvtropes, but since many Raymondites, Stallmanites, and other haters either haven’t heard of it or conveniently forget it when the argument is about something they don’t like, I think it bears repeating.

Sturgeon’s Revelation is intended as an ultimate defence against haters cherry-picking the worst examples of Y and concluding that 90% of Y is crud. The basic subtext is “OK, and what is your point?”

While Y was originally science-fiction, it can be generalised to cover basically anything, including both open source and proprietary software.

One of the most notable Raymondites to have never heard of Sturgeon’s Law is of course Eric S. Raymond himself, who seems to think that every single proprietary software company is exactly as bad as the ones where he worked.