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Dependency

by Randall MunroePublished: 17 Aug 2020License: CC BY-NC 2.5

Comic: Dependency (xkcd #2347). Transcript below. — Hover textSomeday ImageMagick will finally break for good and we'll have a long period of scrambling as we try to reassemble civilization from the rubble.

Why it lands

A picture often shown in talks on open-source sustainability. Large parts of the stack rest on small projects kept alive by one or two unpaid people. The hover text names ImageMagick; the 2024 xz-utils backdoor, slipped in through a project with a single overworked maintainer, made the same point the hard way.

Related

Transcript

ALL MODERN DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE
A PROJECT SOME RANDOM PERSON IN NEBRASKA HAS BEEN THANKLESSLY MAINTAINING SINCE 2003

Credits

Original: Dependency — Randall Munroe, xkcd
Image file: imgs.xkcd.com/comics/dependency_2x.png
License: CC BY-NC 2.5

The English page shows the original image unmodified. The Japanese page shows an adaptation by wtfe²: the lettering was erased from the art and replaced with a Japanese translation. The adaptation is shared under the same license as the original.