How many X are needed
to change a light bulb?

How many nuclear engineers?

1 to install the new bulb.
6 to figure what to do with the old one for the next 10 000 years.

How many US Presidents?

None, the constitution says that only Congress can screw in light bulbs, so only Congress is responsible for the dark, which is why we need a Constitutional ammendment.

How many bureaucrats?

Two. One to assure everyone that everything possible is being done while the other screws the bulb into the water faucet.
Five - one to change the light bulb and the other four to fill out the Environmental Impact Statement.
One to spot the burned-out bulb, his supervisor to authorize a requisition, a requisition typist, twelve clerks to file the requisition copies, a mail clerk to deliver the requisition to the purchasing department, a purchasing agent to order the bulb, a clerk to forward the purchasing order, a clerk to mail-order a receiving clerk to receive the bulb....
Seven-- one to supervise, one to arrange for the electricity to be shut off, one to make sure that safety and quality standards are maintained, one to monitor compliance with local, state, and federal regulations, one to manage personnel relations, one to fill out the paperwork and one to screw the light bulb into the water faucet.
Two - one to screw it in and one to screw it up.
Just one. But she gets promoted three times before she finally finishes screwing it up.
None, we contract out for things like that.

How many Quality managers?

We've formed a quality circle to study the problem of why lightbulbs burn out and to determine the best thing we as managers can do to enable lightbulbs to work smarter, not harder.

How many GNU/Linux users?

1 to post a thread in a mailing list telling the bulb has burnt.
1 to suggest to try to turn the lamp on through command lines.
1 to complain that the user broke the thread.
1 to ask what new bulb will he install.
1 to advice that we shouldn't use the word burn for meaning a broken lightbulb, because it would mean that the bulb was set on fire and that it would be right to say that the bulb broke due to an excess of electrical current.
25 to suggest to install all the kinds of existing and imaginable lightbulbs.
5 who say that the burnt bulb is an upstream issue that doesn't belong to the distro. There's an open bug on the bulb's developer mail list.
1 noob to suggest to install a Microsoft lightbulb.
250 to flood the noob's mail address.
300 to say that a Microsoft lightbulb would turn blue and that you'd had to reboot continuously to get back to normal.
1 former GNU/Linux user who still frequents the forum, to suggest to install an Apple iBulb, which has a fresh and innovating design and it costs $250.
20 to say that iBulbs aren't free, and that they have less functions than a 20 times cheaper standard lightbulb.
15 to suggest to install a national lightbulb.
30 to say that national lightbulbs are crippled remasters of foreign lightbulbs and that they don't bring anything new.
23 to argue if it must be a white or a transparent bulb.
1 to remind everyone that the right name is GNU/Lightbulb.
1 to say that lightbulbs are a Winbugs users thing and that real GNU/Linux users aren't afraid of the dark.
1 to announce finally which will be the model of the installed bulb.
217 to discard the chosen model and suggest another.
6 to complain that the chosen lightbulb has propietary elements, and that another should be used.
20 to say that a 100% free bulb, isn't compatible with the lamp switch.
The same previous 6, to suggest to change the switch for a compatible one.
1 to yell out: “STOP ARGUING AND CHANGE THAT LIGHTBULB FOR GOD'S SAKE!”
350 to ask the previous user what God is he talking about, and that if he has scientific proofs of His existence.
1 to explain how electricity works and why a light bulb is inefficient.
1 to say that we can't trust in corporation-made bulbs and that we should trust in community-made bulbs.
1 to post a link to an ODF file explaining how to build a lightbulb from scratch.
14 to complain about the format of the previous file and asking to send it in txt or LaTeX.
5 to say that they didn't like the taken decission and that they'll fork the house's electric installation and install a better lamp.
1 to post a series of commands to put to change the lightbulb.
1 to comment that he executed the commands and had an error message.
1 to advice that the commands must be executed as root.

And finally:

The father of the first user, who while everyone was discussing, went to the shop and bought the cheapest lightbulb.

Disclaimer:
This joke was mailed to the FSF by its author Andre Machado. The Free Software Foundation claims no copyright on it.