The term appears to have originated in the FreeBSD community, and now stands for any topic which causes heat out of all proportion to its importance.

Explanation from FreeBSD FAQ:
*   http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#BIKESHED-PAINTING
For the original post, see:
*   http://gray.bikeshed.com
Too dull, maybe?
*   http://beige.bikeshed.com
Don't like ''beige''?
*   http://silver.bikeshed.com

etc. ad nauseam.

WadlersLaw is the corollary for ProgrammingLanguage design.

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A bike shed is a shed that contains bikes (obviously).

''What's a "bike"?  What's a "shed"?  In what sense do you mean "contain"?  What do you call an empty "bike shed"?''
* What do ''you'' mean by "mean", "sense", and "empty"?  ''I've no idea, but then I'm not setting out to define the terms'' :)

Its colour is of no importance whatsoever and therefore is guaranteed to cause enormous FlameWar''''''s  whenever the subject is brought up.

''Personally, I prefer to use database tables to store my bikes in.  They just map more naturally to my mental processes.  I demand seven concrete reasons why you use a shed instead of a database table.''

* With apologies to the intended butt of the joke... Whoever wrote the above owes me new morning tea, and came close to owing me a keyboard.

Huh...I was hoping to find some discussion of people's bike sheds. Mine is prefab plastic and holds five bicycles, old aluminum automobile wheels, a couple old dot matrix printers, some various electronics, and stuff for my rocket club. Did I mention that I am a packrat as well as a geek?  ''The more accurate term is 'pacratist'.''

''Well, welcome to wiki, where sheds are made of tables, reasons are made of concrete and assuming meaningful meaning means you don't understand what I meant.''

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See also MeaningDependsOnContext, WadlersLaw
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CategoryProject