• itwontpaymoney (unregistered) in reply to Volmarias
    Volmarias:
    Please, just let this die a horrible stillborn death before it becomes any worse----SNIPPED a river of tears about how bad this is----

    Note from Alex: If you have yet to learn the power of ignoring things* you don't like, and truly feel the need to continue to whine about how much you hate this comic, then do so on the original announcement or in the forums or directly to me.

    I am very recepitive to feedback of any kind, but please send it to the appropriate place. As such, off-topic comments ("first!", "you suck!", "this rocks!", "why did my 'you suck!' comment get censored!?") will be deleted.

    • Igorning MFD is actually amazingly easily in this case. Here's how! if (rssTitle.startsWith("Mandatory Fun Day:") || webTitle.IsColor("Obsidianish") ignore();.

    I'll ignore your ads too, genius.

  • TheKMan (unregistered) in reply to Vas
    Vas:
    We need a Union similar to the old factory working days, if your not on board then your labeled as a scab, taking bread of others table. (or in reality the mercedes out of my driveway)
    I completely agree!!! All that time spent at Uni with promises of high-paying jobs and rewards for the years of study and refining out programming skills, and then there are coders out there that are giving away what we are trying to sell for our work! Think about it, if local car manufacturers are selling cars, and some overseas place comes in and starts giving them away for free, what do you think will happen to the local manufacturers?! What possible excuse could the overseas place have to come here and take the money out of local manufacturers pockets without even making a profit??!! It's like Woolworths giving away everything for free, driving all local businesses to close. Open source is exactly the same thing! I agree Vas, who is going to buy a service when people are out there giving it away for free. Where's my Ferrari?!?!
  • Vas (unregistered) in reply to fu
    fu:
    That's just a patheticly tired joke from a no talent hack.

    can you do better?

    i think it greatly resembles open source supporting people i know. I laugh cause its true.

  • Vas (unregistered) in reply to TheKMan

    Thanks TheKMan

    The worst thing is Open Source software are purely imitators not innovators. Most open source projects thrive on copying proprietry software like clones.

    In a world of no proprietry software, what will be left to copy? In a world of full open source all you will get is a bunch of 90 percent finished projects and apps (check sourceforge) people start them and dont stop them.

    In a wolrd of OpenSource you get a decrease in salary and in the end the end of software development as a career and more of a hobby. no money being spent on innovation because which company wants to be innovative if its going to be released to its competitors anyway?

    I work in a team who needs to think of cutting edge ideas each day to keep us ahead. Most of the guys here are pro Open Source. I sat in the board room one day and said "hey guys lets release our code to open source community" I've never seen so many people just look at me like im crazy. I proved my point to them and havent heard pro open source comments since.

  • chaos95 (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Anon delivers.

    CAPTCHA: facilisis. I think it might be terminal.

  • TheKMan (unregistered)

    Yeah it's exactly like that. Imagine if we went around to each software house, looked at it's products, went and assembled a team of pro-open source coders, and developed the same products then released them for free. It would take down each business in its path. Think about all the jobs that would be lost and the salary decreases. And for what reason? What would we be gaining by doing this? Software isn't created from thin air, software is the result of people's hard work, and this should not be given away for free.

  • Sir Brialliance (unregistered) in reply to Volmarias

    I, for one, welcome our new MFD overlords.

  • Toukarin (unregistered)

    Seriously, the comic sucks. It's almost Web 0.1, whereby the images are almost 2D (poor attempt to look 3D), no colours, squarish limbs, and very dry humour.

    • Poor graphics: strike 1
    • Poor drawings: strike 2
    • Poor content: strike 3

    I have friends who can draw better with basic photoshop skills (yes they can't hand-draw for nuts) who don't even feel they're good enough to start a web comic. And here we have something that somehow gets on to one of the more popular webpages (for god knows what reason) and we're subjected to this painful eyesore.

  • Ajk (unregistered)

    I thought it was funny, please do some more comics that make fun of the OSS community - since they are so sensitive about it they deserve all they get :p

  • Thomas (unregistered)

    Will you do a comic about a kid who wants to run a webcomic but lacks artistic talent, creativity and a sense of humor?

  • Art Creetick (unregistered)

    "I can’t draw"

    I heartily agree with that statement of yours

  • (cs) in reply to itwontpaymoney

    I'll just say, that I visit this site daily and appreciate the geeky humour and scenarios for what they are. Humour. A job well done, Alex and guys. The comic is a brilliant idea which adds more reason to skip work and view this site. Web sites are deceptive in terms of the amount of management required, so I am grateful for it.

    It's a comic, accept it for what it is. We're surely intelligent enough to apply it to our own experiences. Indeed, one very recently occured for me.

    A real shame about the negativity underneath the strip though. A good strip (who gives a crap about the artwork? - artistic style is subjective), otherwise, though.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered)

    ABSOLUTELY GENIUS!

    The real joke isn't the comic itself, it's the comedy reaction it causes amongst the Open Source goons. ESPECIALLY those that actually fit into this stereotype and are offended by it. Genius!

  • jw (unregistered)

    Heh... I remember a guy working at our company, always whining that he is most creative when he writes open source software, so he was spending at least half of his working hours developing some Linux/GPLed PowerPoint clone. He was always talking that money does not matter to him, but when the company had some financial issues and one salary was late, he just left.

    While in our company, some of the colleagues thought he was a genius, because he could talk a lot about 'compiler optimizations', 'Linux boot sequence', 'compiling the kernel', 'why Lisp is better than Python' etc... After he left, I had to fix some of the code he wrote for the company and it was a show-off disaster: lot of void pointers where only a single structure was used, some weird linked-list implementations, bad-designed API, etc...

  • Tei (unregistered) in reply to jw

    Newbie webcomic 101

    Rule #1: draw characters with 4 fingers, not 5.

  • Shakje (unregistered)

    So the militant OSS brigade are making the webcomic better by insulting it and proving the satire, all the while not realising that they are making the caricature more and more like them with every flame.

    In other news, you can't draw noses and this has ruined my day and possibly the weekend.

  • uggalabugga (unregistered)

    I think these stupid comics should be somewhere else than in front page. Crap!

    CAPTCHA gravis

  • zzp (unregistered) in reply to Schnapple
    Yes, Google makes lots of money using open source software. How many other companies do? How many of them are in the Fortune 500?

    • IBM ($98.8B revenue): invests in services and software based on Linux through the IBM Linux Technology Center, which includes over 300 Linux kernel developers -- http://lwn.net/Articles/185602/

    • Sun ($13.8B). Open source products: OpenSolaris, OpenJDK (Java), MySQL, OpenSPARC. CEO Schwartz said his company is the perfect example of how you can make money from opensource products: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/we_think_we_can

    • Apple ($24.0B): Darwin (Mac OS X).

    • Red Hat ($278M): as a quintessential case

    Excuse me but I think you don't know anything about how to make money with open source :)

  • Winnetou (unregistered)

    this comic strip sucks: it's really not funny at all.

    It just shows the author's poor understanding of the idea behind open source software... why would you have to write oss for no money unless you want to? And if you did, why would you condemn others who do earn their money with writing software? Why would advertising free software include getting no money for work?

  • George Nacht (unregistered) in reply to Josh

    On the other hand, let's ask what's being made fun of here. The idealism? The kid's assumption that he'll take over the world? Or the fact that he chose to create economic output in the form of writing open source software? -J [/quote]

    I did not have time to read all comments, so probably someone beat me to it, but I guess the fun is not being made of him being idealist, rather of him being arrogant narrowsighted snob with zero tolerance to other opinions. As for the art, do not worry one bit. I´ve seen waaaaay worse, thad made it to number 150. and counting. Anyway, if pop singer gets throat cancer, and starts to hiss and groand instead of singing, they say he/she invented a new style. Why should the same rule not apply to drawing?

  • v.dog (unregistered) in reply to Tony Green
    Tony Green:
    "I don’t know how to use apostrophe’s"

    Oh the irony!

    That's not ironic, unless you're using Alanis Morrisette's definition of irony.

    "I know how to use apostrophe’s" would be ironic.

    George, there's only two places to use an apostrophe; to denote a missing letter (that's = that is, you're = you are) or indicate possession (Alanis Morrisette's definition definition of irony = the definition of irony belonging to Alanis Morrisette). Never use it for a plural. http://mark.tranchant.co.uk/notes/apostrophe

  • Vanger (unregistered)

    It's just not funny. Drawing, layout - it's nothing compared to the poor content. Just like osnews' comic.

    Try to think up something more interesting, please.

  • PK (unregistered)

    Sun has bought MySQL AB for $1 billion. Most of the proprietary code is same or even worse crap than FOSS. Windows Vista is a perfect example. Most of the WTFs on this site come from the closed-source-software-world.

    Hovewer, instead of fighting one over another, I would say that the most innovative ideas come from the academic world and then are copied by both open source and closed source developers. The top 500 companies rarely do innovations. They buy them.

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward:
    ABSOLUTELY GENIUS!

    The real joke isn't the comic itself, it's the comedy reaction it causes amongst the Open Source goons. ESPECIALLY those that actually fit into this stereotype and are offended by it. Genius!

    They fear my work because it speaks the truth!

    Seriously, though, the cartoons are terrible - that's probably the main reason people are complaining. There are loads of sites offering badly drawn, unfunny comic strips. This site offers something unique. Editing users comments sucks, too. If ignoring stuff is so easy, do it yourself.

  • (cs) in reply to Dave

    Evidently, nobody here has been to ZDNet, where the Linux/OSS trolls are EXACTLY like this dude's (Gilroy, was it?) friend - Working for "THE MAN" is bad (triply so if "THE MAN" is Microsoft), and everyone should dream of a world where all software is open source, and everyone sits like hippies in the field singing. The nonsense these people spew is downright disgusting most of the time, and of course has no factual basis.

    I found the comic quite entertaining, because it DOES represent the majority of pro-OSS people I've seen online.

  • this webcomic is a wtf (unregistered)

    HOLY COW THIS WEBCOMIC IS ABOUT THE WORST THING ON THE WEB

  • (cs) in reply to Josh
    Josh:
    Josh = ASS

    There. Fixed that for you.

    I bet, with your lack of personality, you don't get invited to a lot of parties and such.

    Seriously... Get a friggin' sense of humor.

  • (cs) in reply to :\
    :\:
    I don't see the humor in it

    /snip

    But hey keep your head up if the strip don't work out here Microsoft might have an opening in their FUD department for you. :)

    Ok. You and Josh get back to your home at /. and let the grownups talk, 'kay?

  • (cs) in reply to halber_mensch
    halber_mensch:
    No shit, man. Disliking content on the site is one thing, but to whine like an 8 year old that doesnt want to eat his brussels sprouts is uncalled for. You bastards don't pay the bills to keep the damn site up, so Alex has no obligation to you. You can piss off.

    Now, personally, I can take or leave the comic; but you know what? I have these well developed ocular muscles that allow me to redirect my focus to another part of the screen, thus avoiding the comic should I want to. It takes little effort, and is surprisingly effective.

    Furthermore, the joke is pretty funny. I am an open source developer that is gainfully employed, and I am not ignorant of the presence of greasy-haired smelly zealots living in their parents' basements blaming The Man for all their problems and believing that somehow in their social ineptness and poverty they will spend enough time not playing World of Warcraft to lead an open source revolution that will destroy Microsoft and bring peace and order to the galaxy with the mighty Linux Jedi as its protectorate. They are silly people, and coincidentally can't handle jokes about themselves.

    I nominate this post as the best one in the thread!

    Nice to see someone with a brain here; haven't seen your name before. Welcome! Someone with some intelligence, common sense, and a sense of humor is always a good addition.

  • (cs) in reply to Why
    Why:
    Alex, this is getting pathetic. "Off topic?" Say what you mean. "Off message."

    The topic of this site is pissing time away instead of actually working on our day jobs, which incidentally is what pays your bills. Or do you make money when I just read the article free of ads in my newsreader, and don't come to comment? You're not deleting messages because they are "off topic", which they are not. You're deleting messages because they are harmful to your commercial interest. But deleting them won't make the problem go away. Go ahead: keep it up and see how well that works for you.

    I sincerely hope that the posts Alex starts by deleting are yours.

    Alex didn't start this site to make money, and I'm quite sure that his day job pays his bills.

    I'm also quite sure that if you just STFU and go away, no one will notice. Don't believe me? STFU and go away; we'll see.

  • (cs) in reply to Martin
    Martin:
    Well, I liked it... and as an avid webcomic reader, I know it will probably get better each time. So keep working, George, some of us DO have a sense of humour :P

    Hear, hear! Another intelligent poster!

    And I agree - keep working, George.

    Martin:
    And for those who argue that the comic is based on something than isn`t real, look at it this way: when you tell a joke, you start telling it by saying "Ok, this may not be 100% true, I haven't checked it myself, but I've been told that once a horse went into a bar..."?

    The problem is that we have at least two posters (Josh and :/) who ARE real, and resent the fact that someone poked fun at them; they resent it so much, actually, that they've poked their heads out of mommy's basement to complain here.

  • Ben B (unregistered)

    Aww, don't cry, you know how people are!

  • Jason Voegele (unregistered)

    Hey, don't be so hard on yourself. Not everybody thinks you suck. :)

    I rather like the comic strips so far, and look forward to reading more. I'd imagine that there are others and that silence is ascension.

  • (cs) in reply to asuffield
    asuffield:
    Unfortunately, it's just not funny.

    The only people who seem to be amused by it so far are those who think that free software in the real world is created by 16-year-old prats like this one - it isn't (and I've never met a kid who acted like that, although I have encountered more than a few actual free software developers).

    Free software is partly created under corporate sponsorship, but mostly created during the evenings and weekends of people who have jobs doing something else.

    This IS funny, because it illustrates most of the people who post at /. You know, the ones who have nothing better to do than whine about M$'s evil empire and world domination while they brag about their latest show of 1337 skills and ability to haX0r any web site on the planet.

    And anyone serious about FOSS development doesn't waste their time posting at /. with all of the script kiddies. They also don't waste their time posting FUD about MS, or Windows, or anything else. Instead, they write software.

  • (cs) in reply to mizchief
    mizchief:
    The Real WTF here is how so many people are complaining bout their posts being deleted. It appears one of mine was as well. If someone is cursing or just being overly offensive you may have grounds. Otherwise you are dooming your own site. Your stories and code samples are amusing, but ultimalty it's the community that keeps your site alive.

    So, let's see. If I come to a web site you run, and post hundreds of "mizchief is a moron. mizchief is an idiot. mizchief doesn't know how to run a web site. mizchief uses lousy software. mizchief is a dickwad.", are you telling me that you're not going to start deleting them? Give me your URL, and we'll test that theory.

    I think Alex is well within his rights to do anything he wants with his site, and with any comments made there. Don't like it? Go post your crud somewhere else.

    Alex, feel free to delete this post if you want.

  • Stu (unregistered) in reply to Tex

    Could be talking about userfriendly, I still read it though :-\

  • (cs)

    I agree that people going "OMG A COMIC NEVER READING SITE AGAIN" and/or deconstructing it in 6 paragraphs and ruining any humor it ever had are dumb but can we please just let people disagree without insulting them :(

  • (cs) in reply to halber_mensch
    halber_mensch:
    A person that uses your plugin does not do so in the hopes of capital gain, improvement in business processes, or reliability of business infrastructure. A person that uses your plugin is a person that plays an online role-playing game. So yeah, duh, that person doesn't give you money. Your plugin's maintenance and development is not essential to any of their business needs or even their online playing experience. On the other hand, an embeddable standards compliant HTML rendering engine, for example, does have application in revenue generating industries like embedded devices and network appliances, and businesses in those industries may fund the development of said rendering engine to be able to utilize it at low cost of acquisition, testing, and maintenance. That's how the open source world works. If you fill the void of an actual business need, you may earn money. If you make a toy, however cute it may be, you probably won't see a dime except through selling adspace.

    Really? People only buy software and digitial media for business needs? You need to tell those ringtone makers, video game creators, MMORPG online currency sellers, and others to quit even trying. Hell, art doesn't serve a business purpose, lets just go toss the Mona Lisa in a fire. At least fire will keep someone warm enough to tap out an accounts recievable application.

    I didn't say I knew it would support my living, I was just saying that even to the scale of usage, I have never made a dime off this or the other SF projects I contribute to. My problem was I didn't force people to pay. I was naive that I thought "gee, this might make someone's life just that much simpler that they might toss a buck at me. I didn't say OSS can be legitimate, but for every "Richard Stallman" out there, there are thousands of "me". And linking it back to the original problems in this thread.

    When you create something and give it away for free. I would think you would at least hope that someone who gained an advantage from it would do at least one nice thing back for you. Proprietary software puts that notion ahead of time by forcing you to pay for it. OSS normally shifts that to an afterthought.

    This comic was free content given to you, yet 90% of this thread is crapping all over it. Sounds like OSS as usual to me.

  • Pete from Perth (unregistered) in reply to llama64
    Good first steps on the web comic!

    Ignore the morons here whining about a new feature they didn't pay for.

    TBH, it seems to be on par with the devolution of the site. At first TDWTF was a fairly interesting page for tech rants. Then it dropped to Slashdot standard. Now it's falling to User Friendly level.

    I hope it makes the site more accessible to casual visitors and helps to pay Alex's bills, but, it makes the site a declining value proposition for me as a reader.

    I know it helps 'leverage the synergies' by attaching the web comic to the already successful Daily WTF web site, but, I'd rather the comic were kept to a separate site with a link in the sidebar.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to dkf

    Linux never had a year.

  • (cs) in reply to DannyV
    DannyV:
    2003 is the year of linux? Come on! We ALL know that 2008 is the year of linux!
    DannyV:
    2003 is the year of linux? Come on! We ALL know that 3008 is the year of linux!

    There. Fixed that for you.

  • (cs) in reply to mikeh
    mikeh:
    Otherwise if it keeps crowding the front page, I won't bother reading any more.

    (heh, catpcha is "dolor" - spanish for pain. How appropriate!)

    Heh, ironically, 'adios' is Spanish for goodbye. Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya!

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered)

    Maybe the comic is supposed to be bad so we write the funny content for him.

  • (cs) in reply to cyberjigoku
    cyberjigoku:
    I earn more working on Linux than I did working on Windows. Also a lot more job security. IT DOES pay. Let the windows only slubs think they are funny.

    Perhaps that's because you have no talent, and therefore commanded minimum wage on Windows? And then someone paid you 5 cents an hour to work on Linux instead?

  • vu (unregistered) in reply to KenW
    KenW:
    Why:
    Alex, this is getting pathetic. "Off topic?" Say what you mean. "Off message."

    The topic of this site is pissing time away instead of actually working on our day jobs, which incidentally is what pays your bills. Or do you make money when I just read the article free of ads in my newsreader, and don't come to comment? You're not deleting messages because they are "off topic", which they are not. You're deleting messages because they are harmful to your commercial interest. But deleting them won't make the problem go away. Go ahead: keep it up and see how well that works for you.

    I sincerely hope that the posts Alex starts by deleting are yours.

    Alex didn't start this site to make money, and I'm quite sure that his day job pays his bills.

    I'm also quite sure that if you just STFU and go away, no one will notice. Don't believe me? STFU and go away; we'll see.

    Are we going to get another 50 quality posts from you, douchebag?

  • (cs)
    I get it. I suck

    The artwork is fine, you shouldn't worry too much about that, and keep on practicing to develop your style -- just not here, please. Which is the problem: it's not your artistic abilities that are at fault, it's that the comic is just not funny. Sorry.

    It seems that it tries too hard to point at the most commonplace and, frankly, cheap and lazy generalizations. So, cobol programmers are old and cranky, yet still around; and staffing agencies get kids fresh out of college and position them as experienced experts just to make a buck. And, of course, idealistic open source geeks live with their parents and have no jobs. Ho-hum. yawn

    These observations in and of themselves are not funny. And you seem to just be pointing them out, instead of giving them a point of view. Without an angle, they're just, well, real life. And real life is boring.

     -dZ.
  • Vas (unregistered) in reply to KenW

    ha ha, this one made my night.

    Seriously the only way you can make money off open source is by converting an opensource project for a company working internally. However doing this means your making another ten peoples job obsolete which means another ten people in the market looking for any job to put bread on the table which means lowing you ability to get paid.

    Comon its not that hard, its simple economics. Truth is open source is for uni students who still believe software developers are in high demand. after two years of real work experience we all learn that thats not the case. the people that continue with this idealism are those jerk offs that thin 40k is heaps of money because they sit in their house all day ride their bike to work and they only need to spend money on rent and a dirty magazine to unload on while talking to some cyber girl.

    comon programmers have some dignity lets raise our profile, jobs and salary again, stop giving your skills away for free. not matter if your ugly bald and geeky, if you start selling your skills for money again you might have the chance to see a chick naked, might be a fat chick but a girl all the same.

  • Jessy Ouellette (unregistered)

    Hey, Don't stop this web comics. I posted them in our work Campfire room (chat room) and every one loves them, who cares what it looks like, they are funny!!!

    Keep up with the good work!

  • (cs) in reply to zzp
    zzp:
    Yes, Google makes lots of money using open source software. How many other companies do? How many of them are in the Fortune 500?

    • IBM ($98.8B revenue): invests in services and software based on Linux through the IBM Linux Technology Center, which includes over 300 Linux kernel developers -- http://lwn.net/Articles/185602/

    • Sun ($13.8B). Open source products: OpenSolaris, OpenJDK (Java), MySQL, OpenSPARC. CEO Schwartz said his company is the perfect example of how you can make money from opensource products: http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/we_think_we_can

    • Apple ($24.0B): Darwin (Mac OS X).

    • Red Hat ($278M): as a quintessential case

    Excuse me but I think you don't know anything about how to make money with open source :)

    Sun: They open-sourced Solaris when they couldn't sell it profitably anymore because of competition from Linux. Thus, they threw in the towel. Apple Darwin: They don't make any money out of it. No, it's not OS X. It's just lost investment.

    IBM: I wonder what share of their income comes from Linux services. So far I didn't see any number in their quarterly conference call. 300 Linux Kernel Developers is <$10M/year expenses. They can afford to waste it.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymous
    My comic is still 100000 times better.

    Yes! That is funny! Is that a real comic, or are you making them up for this forum?

    -dZ.

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