The Internet, with its myriad collection of protocols and code and hardware, is amazingly complex. You may think that putting together that shelving unit from IKEA is complex, but that’s nothing compared to the Internet. Most of the code that means anything on the Internet, right down to the very foundations of the Web itself, is built on Free and Open Source Software, aka FOSS. If you know anything about me, you know I’m all about Open Source. You, like me, may also know that many people in that community have contributed a great deal to the Internet as we know it with little or no compensation.

That’s a problem for which many suggestions and observations have been made, some serious, and of them even funny. To wit, consider this cartoon from the legendary xkcd.

Now, I’m no xkcd, but I looked at that and thought, “You know what would be even funnier?” A few minutes later, with the help of the GIMP and a thorough search for just the right image, I created the following.

Enjoy!