• (cs) in reply to PK
    PK:
    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.

    Man, some of crappest code ever was I saw in BSD. Check tcp_input() function - 2000 lines of spaghetti.

  • Peter Szieba (unregistered)

    As a C# junior developer, I'm not offended by the comic's theme nor stereotyping. I don't even mind the crappy artwork; some of the best webcomics are done by average drawers.

    The problem with this is that it's clumsily written and stale.

    If you want to entertain us by targeting stereotypes, you should go for a Maddox-style rant instead. You suck as a cartoonist. Sorry.

  • Perry (unregistered)

    What's being made fun here is not idealism but rather idealism on someone else's dime. The true idealist lives in reality not on mummy's checkbook.

  • (cs)

    Come on, this comic is inaccurate. I earn good money working on open source software.

  • zzp (unregistered) in reply to alegr
    They open-sourced Solaris when they couldn't sell it profitably anymore.

    So you prove my point ! Making Solaris open source was a way to make MORE money.

    Of course you conveniently didn't comment on Java, MySQL, OpenSPARC, Red Hat, etc.

    Oh well, if you want to stick your head under the sand and keep trying to convince yourself it is impossible to make money off open source, I don't care :)

  • FiveNines (unregistered) in reply to Schnapple
    And it's an exaggerated caricature of the open source movement and the people who believe in it.

    Actually, it seems to be a cartoon based on the group of people who dont make any attempt to understand FOSS and assume since there's no money involved, its for communists.

    But there is some truth to the notion that a lot of people who have a "Open Source Forever!" stance also have a "Death to Micro$oft!" stance and a "Windows is evil!" stance and can't understand why anyone in the world would ever use a piece of proprietary software, never see any flaws or faults at all in using FOSS,

    There is certainly a portion of FOSS who actively argue against the use of Microsoft software. That has little to do with the ideolism versus financial aspects of life which seems to form the core of the "joke".

    There are many, many web developers who exclusively use open-source software for every aspect of their livelihood.

    There are even more developers, perhaps even most, who do not distribute their software outside their employing company and for whom the choice between commercial and open-source is an entirely practical one.

    And out of all these people using open source software in their day to day life, you will find the bulk of the developers who write open source software.

    Some developers as mentioned are employed explicitly to write open source software, but many just do so for fun, to scratch an itch, or to provide value to other people around the world.

    That some people cant understand undertaking a task for a reason other than profit is sad but entirely expected; but the picture painted by the comic is one that does not appear to have any basis.

  • Rev. Spaminator (unregistered) in reply to dkf

    Every year can be the Year of Linux. I use it all year, every year.

    BTW, I have met some of those guys stereotyped in the strip. I would love to see some fun poked at the MS stereotypes I've encountered.

  • stacy (unregistered) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    DannyV:
    2003 is the year of linux? Come on! We ALL know that 2008 is the year of linux!
    I remember when 1993 was the Year of Linux.
    I remember when 1983 was the year UNIX was supposed to die!
  • Mr Grammar (unregistered) in reply to KenW
    KenW:
    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!

    I fail to see the irony. It may be appropriate, but not ironic in any sense.

  • Vas (unregistered) in reply to zzp

    Sure companies can make money because they dont have to pay as many developers. Its like outsourcing work to India, except cheaper because people are doing the work for free.

    Open Source doesnt hurt companies, it hurts developers, increased revenue from companies is due to less developers.

  • (cs) in reply to stacy
    stacy:
    I remember when 1983 was the year UNIX was supposed to die!

    Is UNIX (real, AT&T, proprietary) still alive (other than in SCO imagination)?

  • Your.Master (unregistered) in reply to Vas
    Vas:
    Time to tighten up guys, Open Source is doing us damage. The only good thing it can achieve is for educational purposes, but do we really want more skilled developers in our industry, we already have too many 4 month IT schools out there..

    The real WTF is that you're implying that these too many 4 month IT schools are producing skilled developers.

    Vas:
    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 [ad hominem strawman attack about success with women clipped]

    I am a Microsoft developer. As in, employed by Microsoft. I work on closed source software. With that said, you are entirely wrong about this.

    Aside from all the junk you've spewed about the motives of OSS programmers and the "only way" to make money from OSS, the major fallacy here is the idea that development is zero-sum. In other words, you think there is a finite amount of software development to be done in the Universe, and that portion of OSS people who code for free or pittance bounties are taking it away, thus reducing demand and pricing you out of the market.

    I've noticed that often, when people say "it's simple economics" it isn't simple economics.

    There's this thing, called network effect. What that means is that with some commodities, the more they exist, the more valuable they are. Imagine being the tenth guy with a telephone. Congratulations! You can call 9 other people. Even if the phone cost 1 cent, nobody would buy one unless they knew one of the other 10 guys. Now, though, everybody has at least one telephone # and multiple telephones at home. Often 1 cellphone #/person in the household, too.

    In tech, overwhelmingly the trend has been that the more software that exists, the more demand exists for more software. Many developers were hired to work on Internet Explorer 7 and 8 because of firefox (mozilla pays employees too, but there are unpaid contributors, sure). Microsoft salaries are high, far more than 40k even in locales with much lower costs of living than silicon valley. So w00t. Free market will spread more money unto everyone!

    Progress breeds progress. It doesn't matter how TCP/IP was developed, but because it was developed we can now develop P2P protocols/applications, and file transfer thingies in a million varieties, and VoIP, and IPTV, and web browsers; the web browsers in turn allow and Youtube and Google. And everything results in something else.

    Software developers ARE in high demand, I got 4 offers coming out of school less than a year ago and I only applied to Google (and got an offer, turned it down, and while I'm not certain long-term I made the right choice -- I had been planning on grad school and just changed my mind -- I can tell you that in terms of pure $$$ I made the correct decision, barring another massive stock run-up). Of course, depending on where you want to live, your local situation may vary, but that's not really an OSS issue. Some people have bad luck, sure. In your case, maybe it's just that you suck?

    I actually walk to work; I hate driving, when I walk I don't have to pay attention to what I'm doing. I could also not pay attention when driving but then I'm criminally negligent.

    The comic itself? Not very funny, but certainly not offensive. The offended parties need to lighten up, a LOT. And yes, such people as the Linux guy in this comic do exist, I have met them. They are a minority of contributors, sure (not actually so sure about them being a minority of home users, but I'm not sure they aren't, either: no data).

    Author needs to replace trite jokes like the one in the comic with more spontaneous ones, like when he explained that his art will improve at the same moment that he runs out of jokes. I could draw better and I suck at drawing, but it's a webcomic so I don't care about that so much.

    A part of me thinks that the comic might have been crafted to provoke just such hilarious reactions as appeared here. I don't actually believe that, but it would be genius. The only time I was more amused reading comments here was that stupid goddamn thread a while back where about 15 different theories of how C would behave each had an equal number of supporters and all they could agree on were that the minority who were actually correct, were stupid. Can't remember what detail it was, now.

  • maree (unregistered)

    The location of Tux is very suggestive.

  • anonymous web comic expert (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    My comic is still 100000 times better. (comic with "Hi I'm a corporate sellout/linux user" ..)

    QFT

    The alex:
    For those of you who don't know how to ignore stuff you don't like blah blah blah

    It's called signal to noise ratio, and it can ruin your internet experience, in more ways than one. I haven't read every web comic on the internet in search of each one's 1 in 1000 actually funny jokes, and I don't see why this one should be special.

  • Sahi (unregistered)

    I do like it, and I am surprised by how many people feel insulted by this comic.

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to Sahi
    Sahi:
    I do like it, and I am surprised by how many people feel insulted by this comic.

    Your taste isn't that representative of the users of this site then! It would be interesting to see the results of a poll on this. I doubt there'd be as much complaining about it if 1) it wasn't on the front page but on a link to the site, 2) peoples comments hadn't been censored and 3) it had been any good.

  • (cs) in reply to dkf
    dkf:
    DannyV:
    2003 is the year of linux? Come on! We ALL know that 2008 is the year of linux!
    I remember when 1993 was the Year of Linux.
    Which is just proof that the Year of Linux never ended.
  • Reverend (unregistered)

    Good grief people, get over yourself. Some of you may not realize it, but 95% of comedy is exaggerated stereotypes. That's what makes it funny! If we couldn't relate to part of the humor there would be no joke.

    So, if the humor hits a bit too close to home then perhaps you take yourself too seriously? I find that people that can't laugh at themselves are usually arrogant bores, and based on the comments I'm reading I'd say that observation won't be changing anytime soon.

    I just can't believe that in this day and age a whole group of you are still going to get all huffy and personally offended that someone actually had the audacity to make a joke about open source advocates, like they have never made fun of anyone else. Please.

    For the record, the comic gave me a good chuckle. Nice job.

  • (cs) in reply to Josh

    Problem is, most open source projects are run by people who THINK they are great, but are actually just middle of the field -- typically, intelligent students, or under-stimualted IT employees. By the time you're great, you're usually working at a good salary at a commercial company, and you have a family to feed. The 15 years of experience is often missing from FOSS projects.

    There are, of course, a few counter-examples, such as Apache, or the Linux kernel. But I still can't print to my Canon printer from my Linux box.

  • Gparent (unregistered) in reply to :\
    :\:
    I like the stereotyping here. So whats next a strip on how all Latino's eat rice and beans while everyone of African decent love to eat fried chicken and BBQ all the time?

    I don't see the humor in it basically your taking a large segment of the software development community stereotyping them as communist software developers who are all long haired stallman types and that no money can ever be made from an open source project. You do realize their are many open source developers out there making good money alot more then $42k a year.

    Holy crap get over yourself. It's a freaking comic.

  • Howi (unregistered)

    I thought it was amusing...

    Practice drawing a bit, though :) Faces keep changing.

  • (cs) in reply to alegr
    alegr:
    PK:
    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.

    Man, some of crappest code ever was I saw in BSD. Check tcp_input() function - 2000 lines of spaghetti.

    Please. I don't need acid flashbacks.

    Right back to you, then: have you checked out the original BSD DNS code? It's a very faithful rendition of RFC1035, which is in turn a total brain-dump by Mockapetris. The goggles, they do nothing.

    (Mind you, the peculiar thing is that the code apparently works...)

  • (cs) in reply to Freddy Bob
    operagost:
    :\:
    I like the stereotyping here. So whats next a strip on how all Latino's eat rice and beans while everyone of African decent love to eat fried chicken and BBQ all the time?
    No, but we're dangerously close to one about improper apostrophe usage and word confusion.
    Now, why on earth would anybody on this site waste their time by arguing about apostrophes? Dearie me. The most trivial of IDEs would pick that sort of stuff up.

    Well, here goes otherwise:

    Freddy Bob:
    That should be "anatomically correctly". "Correct" is an adjective and not the adverb which would have been needed to modify the verb. Quibbles aside though, Mandatory Fun Day sucks dogs' balls.
    Gotta love that quibble. Quibble me more, Freddy Bob. Anatomically, "sucking dogs' balls" appears an interesting challenge, unless you've cut them off first; but then, I don't quite know what y'all eat for breakfast down there in 'Bama.

    But at least somebody on this site knows how to treat a well-brought-up apostrophe; not to mention an inadvisable adjective.

  • Vadi (unregistered)

    Yay funnyyyy.

    Most IT jobs involve open-source in one way or another though, so it's all cool.

  • Vas (unregistered) in reply to Your.Master

    First of all i dont suck, I work on more interesting R&D projects you would ever at Microsoft, So dont be trying to drop names to validate your opinion.

    in the end you have 1 year worth of experience, What your worth is nothing compared to the rate software developers should be getting and use to be getting. So come back in a few years and review what you have just said and repost again.

    More software meaning more demand for software doesnt make sense. For example there are open source software out there for dentists, that does what proprietry software does. How does this increase the need for more proprietry dental software.

    Maybe ill reply in more detail to your post, but too busy at the moment

  • Chris (unregistered)

    IMHO a lot of the linux "fanboys" are only big fans because it's free in the sense you can download it and not have to pay for it.

    They don't give a damn about getting the source, or the fact you can, or that it's open, it's just a way to get an OS, office suite, DVD & media player etc without having to pay a penny.

    I'm too old and jaded for OS holy wars - been there, done that when it was C64 vs Spectrum, then Amiga vs Atari, so tbh Mac OS v Windows v Linux - I really don't care, and I use all three.

  • l33t h4x0r (unregistered) in reply to Hacky
  • passerby (unregistered) in reply to :\

    Stereotypes are funny. This joke involves people who are of a community that is widely singled out as the blunt of a joke and feel empowered by the anonymity of the Internet. A community that stereotypically frequents websites such as these. Maybe you should be less appalled of how much you have in common with the character being made fun of and instead bask in the joyous absurdity of stereotypes.

    Instead you could over-analyze every situation and joke in hopes that your "different" view on the matter makes you a step above the average Joe.

    I've developed open source, and this gave me a chuckle.

  • anonymous (unregistered) in reply to :\

    Yeah, Exactly!

    We can make humour without sterotypes, or shocks. or any of that stuff!

    These two guys walk into a bar, and they have a drink bit of a chat then they leave! lmao!!

    Shame when somethings close to home people can't take a joke. I'd link some topics on humour, what it releases, how its a therapy and all that. but i suspect your to wrapped up in defending yourself.

    Just to note I use open source, and I've contributed to open source projects. I'm not denying that you can make money of open-source. you can. But if you can't get the joke then maybe your the sterotype? Bitter much?

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