1971: Dear user, You cannot have more than 10,000 records. If we increased the maximum in the data base schema, we'd have to modify half of our software. Sorry, IT.
1981: Dear user, You cannot have more than 10,000 records. Our software vendor set this limit and we don't have the source code. Sorry, IT.
1991: Dear user, You cannot have more than 10,000 records. We don't have enough room in our budget for more hard disk. Sorry, IT.
2001: Dear user, You cannot have more than 10,000 records. Our network traffic is so high that we had to set arbitrary limits. Sorry, IT.
2011: Dear user, You cannot have more than 10,000 records. The internet is full. Sorry, Google.
[EDIT: Replaced "contacts" with "records" 5 times. The general case causes less confusion. Thank you, juiceandjuice.]
True, but hackers are smart people and don't like dumb rules.
In real physical rolodex you can understand the limit, because it really exists. In Gmail it's hardcoded "OK <= 10000" and that's hard to understand, specially when there's upgrade for 20,000 contacts - so 10,000 is just an artificial dumb rule.
You don't need the source! Just find where 10,000 limit is in the binary and change it to some other larger number. Assuming it's a normal 4-byte signed integer, it can go a lot higher..
1981: Dear user, You cannot have more than 10,000 records. Our software vendor set this limit and we don't have the source code. Sorry, IT.
1991: Dear user, You cannot have more than 10,000 records. We don't have enough room in our budget for more hard disk. Sorry, IT.
2001: Dear user, You cannot have more than 10,000 records. Our network traffic is so high that we had to set arbitrary limits. Sorry, IT.
2011: Dear user, You cannot have more than 10,000 records. The internet is full. Sorry, Google.
[EDIT: Replaced "contacts" with "records" 5 times. The general case causes less confusion. Thank you, juiceandjuice.]