[HN Gopher] "What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus?" - An Emp...
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"What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus?" - An Empirical Study
(2000)
Author : shmde
Score : 37 points
Date : 2023-09-24 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (web.archive.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (web.archive.org)
| amelius wrote:
| First he should write a book on the architecture of the 5.x and
| 6.x kernels because I can't find one anywhere.
| blueflow wrote:
| Is it a common impression that consulting the kernel source has
| gotten more difficult since 5.x for getting the same knowledge?
| pvaldes wrote:
| He hit a bus before probably. Are we talking about internal or
| universal serial?
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37070841 - Aug 2023 (7
| comments)
|
| _What If Linus Torvalds Gets Hit by a Bus? (2000)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794892 - Dec 2018 (107
| comments)
| wkat4242 wrote:
| One from the same timeframe:
|
| What if Chuck Norris gets hit by a bus? Time to buy a new bus.
| anonymousd3vil wrote:
| The data is old. In the account of increased population, traffic
| and pollution, the study should be reconducted just to be safe.
| The muffin factor probably has changed a lot since then and even
| we should propose to include his new favorites.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Hah, I recall very well when this was posted. It was my first
| introduction to the bus factor[1], and I still refer to it from
| time to time.
|
| Segfault.org had a lot of fun jokes, just look at the front page
| from that time[2] which includes some future-predicting ones like
| "Netscape 6 Special Edition To Feature Extra Ads"[3] (not Mozilla
| as such but).
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
|
| [2]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010616172138/http://segfault.o...
|
| [3]:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010619114515/http://segfault.o...
| ajorgensen wrote:
| I was recently introduced to the "lottery factor" as a less
| morbid alternative. As in, if one of us won the lottery
| tomorrow and quit on the spot what would happen.
| iotku wrote:
| I can kinda see the point there, but in the lottery example
| there's at least a possibility of making contact at a later
| date.
|
| The bus is irreversible and sudden.
|
| I'd say the lottery example works for example with
| skills/knowledge. ("Do we have someone else who can do what
| that person was doing?")
|
| While the Bus factor is very relevant for issues like
| infrastructure and access ("The only person who knew the
| important passphrase or credentials is now lying dead on the
| pavement.)
| spott wrote:
| The difference between the lottery factor and your bus
| factor makes a decent proxy for how much people like
| working there.
|
| If someone has a lottery factor equal total their bus
| factor, then you expect them to say "screw you" when asked
| for help, and you should probably work on that.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Didn't Ballmer do a cost-benefit study on this in '07 only to
| determine that if you struck Linus down then he would become more
| powerful than anyone could imagine?
| version_five wrote:
| If true, would that still hold now? There is so much politics
| and polarization and agendas - I'm not aware in Linux
| specifically but in tech and open source generally. Without
| benevolent dictators I think a lot of projects would fragment
| very badly and leave big openings for companies like Microsoft.
| I think we're going to see that as a failure mode in big open
| source projects more and more.
| [deleted]
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I'm not really part of the Linux community so I feel a bit
| confused. It definitely seems like it's meant in jest, though at
| the time of writing, there probably would have been a real
| concern around business continuity.
|
| Am I just wildly missing the joke?
| [deleted]
| galdosdi wrote:
| Yeah it's just a joke, lightly poking fun at contemporary
| commentary worrying about the viability of open source projects
| perceived as too centralized around one key person. I don't
| know how serious the concerns ever were, though keep in mind
| that the idea of relying on open source software was still
| novel at the time.
|
| As I recall, a lot of the world wide web seemed to be jestful
| writing of a similar tone (irreverently humorous but ultimately
| playfully cynical at most, not darkly cynical as today) in
| those days.
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(page generated 2023-09-24 23:01 UTC)