How many GIMP developers does it take to change a lightbulb? ------------------------------------------------------------ Answer: 358 Gimp developers: 1 to mention on IRC that the lightbulb is broken and needs to be changed. 5 to discuss something else and wait for the reporter to go away. 1 to tell the reporter, that the furniture of GIMP matches the color of the carpet. 1 to ask how this is related to the lightbulb. 3 to explain, that the other person simply is crazy and should better be ignored. 1 to tell the original reporter, that he is wasting the gimp developers time. Simply changing the lightbulb would have been more helpful. It's trivial anyway. 2 other people to point out, that it is unlikly to become fixed unless there is a report on bugzilla. 1 to file the bug in bugzilla. 1 to explain that this bugreport is useless, because it is not reproduceable. He asks for the exact OS version and steps to reproduce the problem. He sets the bug NEEDINFO. 1 to report that he can reproduce the bug with the original instructions. He reopens the bug. 4 to comment on the problem in bugzilla but don't come to a real solution. 1 to comment on bugzilla to suggest that the bug should be discussed on the mailinglist. 1 to write the initial mail to the mailinglist. 13 to not reply to the mail, maybe the problem goes away then. 1 to point out that the lightbulb has been broken for ages now and he was waiting for ages, hoping that someone would step up and finally take care of the problem. 5 to mention, that Photoshops lightbulbs are marked with an arrow, which makes it obvious to the user how to exchange the lightbulb themselves. 224 to point out, that *this* is the very reason why Photoshop is preferred by most people over the GIMP. Having an arrow on the GIMP's lightbulb would increase the user base by at least 400%. 1 to calmly explain, that GIMP always had the philosophy to not focus on newbies, and have a streamlined workflow for gimp power users. An arrow on the lightbulb would be a severe intrusion in the workflow of power users. 3 to suggest that the arrow on the lightbulb could be configurable. 10 to refuse to discuss more preference options. 1 to suggest that maybe the arrow should be engraved in the lightbulb. This would have the advantage, that even blind persons could exchange the lightbulb. 2 that finally realize that two arrows are needed, because you need to turn it in two directions: to remove the old and to insert a new lightbulb. 4 to nitpick, that this would be ambiguous and needs careful thinking for the UI design. 1 to complain that all this has been discussed ages ago and that the people discussing this problem should finally look up what the results of the earlier discussion were. 23 to shut up and wait for the problem to go away. 1 to mention, that the mailing list archives are broken. 2 to mention alternate archives and to suggest that the website should point to these. 1 to point out that the earlier discussion did not yield any results. 1 to come up with a patch: soldering a cable to the lightbulb socket enables you to not only attach a new lightbulb, but also a ventilator. 1 to refuse the patch, because it is an evil hack. 7 to complain about the introduction of a new feature, when we are in a feature freeze. 1 to explain that the patch fixes a real bug and it would have been silly to not fix the missing ventilator issue at the same time. 1 to ask that the patch gets attached to the bugzilla bug, because its easier to track there. 1 to attach the patch. 1 to explain that the patch should be in unified diff and not compressed. 1 to refuse the patch, because it does not follow the gimp coding style as described in HACKING. Also there is whitespace at the end of some lines. 1 getting furious, claiming that the patch was preliminary and wondering about the meaning of "release early, release often". 1 to explain to the patch author that the gimp developers are hostile anyway and he better would get used to that. 6 to complain to the last one that he obviously did not read the proposed patch, because then it would have been clear that the patch is unacceptable. 1 to explain that he indeed did not read the patch, but he made that experience in discussions ages ago and just wanted to lift the mood of the patch author. 3 to ask the people to finally come back to a sane reasoning. 12 to wait for the problem to solve itself. 1 to read the bugzilla bug, add the PATCH keyword, wondering why this patch has not been applied yet. 1 to remove the PATCH keyword because the patch is unacceptable. 1 to discover that the whole electric infrastructure of the GIMP is broken, rip the cables out of the wall, build a new cable conduit installation, install new cables, install new switches, install new sockets, plaster the walls again, newly wallpaper the whole room, make a new paneling for the ceiling, painting the whole room in fresh colors and exchanging the lightbulb, which now can be a lot brighter too. 1 to discover that 150W is much too bright. 1 to bump the bug to the 2.0.1 milestone.