Linux - the Ultimate Agile Project?

In a recent article at Network World, the executive director of Linux Foundation, Jim Zemlin,says "that Linux is a success because the people building it don't plan." There's also a mention about "Linus Torvalds told attendees at LinuxCon in August that he can't predict what's next and doesn't think of himself as a visionary kind of guy. He is focused on the changes to the next release and perhaps the one after that."

That sound pretty much like a iterative development cycle.

Rationality and Social acceptance

I've just listened an interview of Bob Lutz, who wrote "Car Guys vs. Bean Counters: The Battle for the Soul of American Business" (haven't got that book, though). One point caught my attention. Lutz said something like "Customers always tell you the rational, socially acceptable reasons when doing customer research with interviews". In the context of car manufacturing, this means that most wanted features in cars are reliability and safety. But when the buying decision is made, it is the irrational reasons that matter.

So you could say that customers doesn't know what they want, and most of customer research by interviews or requirement gathering might be waste. Customers and end users just say what they think is the norm in the domain, they don't think what they really need. They only give the rational and socially acceptable requirements. So what is needed is deeper research on what users really need, interviews or planning meetings aren't enough, and might actually be harmful.