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How many GNU/Linux users are needed to change a light bulb?

gnu.org

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Re: How many GNU/Linux users are needed to change a light bulb?

#53

Post by spzb »

csunbird wrote: post #39
aequitas wrote: post #2

> The father of the first user, who while everyone was discussing, went to the shop and bought the cheapest lightbulb. Of course it doesn't end there: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0 (lightbulb scene from Malcolm in the Middle).

I think the term for that is "Shaving the Yak" https://seths.blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that/ (I am not associated with this site)

I’m going to work that into every conversation I can now. My workplace is theoretically involved in supplying IT functions to a university but mainly seems to employ an army of yak shavers.

Re: How many GNU/Linux users are needed to change a light bulb?

#54

Post by arp242 »

microtonal wrote: post #25
arp242 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit of an exaggeration; Xorg isn't GNU, neither is Firefox, or a lot of other desktop and server applications and programming environments beyond gcc. It also depends heavily on the machine; if you use GNOME then you've got another big chunk of GNU in there, but in my case the only major part that I actually use frequently is GNU libc, a subset of the GNU coreutils (which I'd very much like to replace with s…

It also depends heavily on the machine; if you use GNOME then you've got another big chunk of GNU in there, but in my case the only major part that I actually use frequently is GNU libc, a subset of the GNU coreutils (which I'd very much like to replace with something better by the way), and maybe a few others libraries left or right used by some applications. Isn't GNOME independent from GNU nowadays, it has its own…

I'm not sure; it's listed on the GNU website but https://www.gnu.org/software/gnome/ redirects to gnome.org, and I can't find GNU mentioned on gnome.org at all. GNOME also has its own infrastructure. So yeah, any relationship between GNOME, GTK, and associated projects seems very weak at best, if it still exists at all.

Re: How many GNU/Linux users are needed to change a light bulb?

#59

Post by taffer »

fierarul wrote: post #58

And... Why aren't there community done bulbs or printers or cars? The pinnacle of technology is mostly free and open source. Yet, I don't see this in any other industry sector. So... is tech ahead of the curve of the most idealistic one?

Light bulbs and cars have significant marginal costs that software does not have. Some types of software (operating systems, DB, browsers) also have a network or platform effect, so people actually have an incentive to get other people to use or even improve their software.
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