The rule that the organisation of the software and the organisation of the software team will be congruent; originally stated as "If you have four groups working on a compiler, you'll get a 4-pass compiler".

Melvin Conway, an early proto-hacker, wrote an assembler for the Burroughs 220 called SAVE. The name "SAVE" didn't stand for anything; it was just that you lost fewer card decks and listings because they all had SAVE written on them.

[Jargon File]