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The “color of the bikeshed” is a proverbial phrase referring to the apparent ease with which one can get approval for building a large and complex project (such as a billion-dollar laboratory) compared to the difficulty of reaching consensus to build something conceptually simple — because everyone involved wants to add their own opinion. This is considered a form of red tape when it occurs physically.

Explanation

A major laboratory is so vastly expensive and complicated that people cannot understand it, so they assume that those working on it understand it. On the other hand, everyone understands a bikeshed, so building one results in endless discussions. Everyone involved wants to add his touch and show that he is there.

The adage, “Why should I care what color the bikeshed is?”, means: just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the color they plan to paint it.

The phrase has often been quoted in collaborative settings such as wikis and open source software projects, where “the bikeshed problem” is apparent. People stay quiet on technical issues, but when an issue like indentation formatting or naming conventions arises, everyone has an opinion.

History

This expression of the idea was explained by C. Northcote Parkinson in his management book, Parkinson’s Law (1957), and popularized by a 1999 email post by Poul-Henning Kamp to the FreeBSD development mailing list. Ironically in the arguments which Parkinson illustrated, e.g., whether the roof should be made of asbestos or galvanised iron, one aspect not mentioned was the color!

The original explanation used a nuclear power plant as the expensive-but-easy-to-approve project, but in the United States such an item is in fact not easy to approve, so this example may confuse the point, which is that once there is agreement in principle to do a large and complicated thing, it is easy to approve a specific plan for it.