225: Open Source

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Open Source


Richard Stallman, or rms after his handle, is an old-school hacker known in the late 2000s primarily for establishing the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and initiating the GNU Project in the early 1980s, which produced major portions of what would later be the GNU/Linux operating system. In this capacity, he's also known for being one of the most ardent and outspoken proponents of open source software, often referred to by Stallman as free software. In fact, his advocacy is so emphatic and polemical that he has garnered active dislike from traditionalists who believe that software source code should be retained as a trade secret by its developer(s). Stallman has expressed that he did not even wish to be in a comic using the phrase Open Source (see the trivia section).

While this dislike may not rise to the level of hiring ninja assassins to remove him from the world, it is strong. The joke of the comic, as it also turns out, is that the two Cueballs dressed up as ninjas were just out to have a fun time teasing Stallman, and they seemed to know that Stallman's paranoia about Microsoft makes him sleep with no fewer than two katana swords near his bed. This type of sword was one of the traditionally made Japanese swords that were used by the samurai of feudal Japan. A ninja was a covert agent or mercenary in feudal Japan. Their covert methods of waging irregular warfare were deemed "dishonorable" and "beneath" the samurai-caste, who observed strict rules about honor and combat. So this makes sense in this comic with Stallman, the samurai, and the ninjas, the lackeys of the oppressing Microsoft (at least in his mind). It also turns out that they specifically choose targets for their raids who have reason to be paranoid of larger companies that might send someone after them, and thus sleep with weapons near their beds. Stallman has received a Katana due to this comic (see the trivia section).

GPL refers to the 'GNU General Public License', which is a copyright license written by the FSF that covers much GNU software and plenty of other free software besides. It stipulates that software so copyrighted must always be provided along with full source code, and that everyone in possession of such software is free to use, study, modify, and redistribute it for any purpose whatsoever (including sale or resale), provided they give due credit to any other contributing developers, also provide access to the complete source code and retain all copyright notices.


During the attack, Richard Stallman begins to speak like he quotes an old play. For instance, the wording "For a GNU dawn!" is pronounced "For a g'new dawn!", following the pronunciation of GNU, so it is a version of New Dawn, a sentence used often in fiction. He even gets annoyed when it turns out that the ninjas just run away. He had clearly waited a long time to, even looking forward to, defending himself with his katanas.

Because the two "ninjas" had so much fun pranking Stallman, they plan to do more of these raids, even mentioning two other possible future targets on their way out of the window:

Eric S. Raymond is a famous hacker who wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar and has been something of an unofficial spokesperson for open source as a software development methodology. The plan to prank Eric Raymond could be a bad one, since he is an experienced martial artist, swordsman, and firearm enthusiast. However, this seems to be the attraction of these two "ninjas," as can be seen by what they seem to know about their other possible target:


A third possible target of this prank is mentioned in the title text. Ralph Nader is a famous consumer rights advocate, most famous for his controversial 2000 presidential run, and the 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed. Nader is an environmentalist, a member of the Green Party, and he supports clean energy, thus he would naturally be opposed to "Big Oil" companies.


[The first panel has the second panel inside it. It also has a slightly light gray background color. Just above the inlaid second panel is Richard Stallman lying in his bed sleeping, the bottom part at the foot of the bed is hidden behind the second panel below. Below his bed under his head lies a katana sword in its sheath, and another one hangs in its sheath behind the end of the bed. Two ninjas with black cloth around their heads and swords jump through the skylight smashing it so glass scatters around them. Each of them is hanging one-handed from the same rope coming down from the skylight. The rope ends just above the inlaid frame below. The two ninjas shouts at Richard Stallman, from four speech bubbles that have pointy ends to indicate how the two alternately speak. (These bubbles are white not gray.)]
Richard Stallman: Zzzz
Bottom Ninja: The GPL must be stopped.
Top Ninja: At the source.
Bottom Ninja: You.
[In the second inlaid panel (with normal white background), Richard Stallman wakes up immediately, and while sitting up in bed, he pulls out both his katana swords from their sheaths leaving the sheaths under and behind the bed. One hand is up in the air with the sword from behind the bed, and the other is still pointing down with the swords from below the bed. Lines indicate the fast movement of the swords. His three speech bubbles are like those of the ninjas, the last two even breaking the panel entering into the large first panel.]
Katana swords: Shing! Shing!
[An outside scene at night with black sky. Richard Stallman's gray house can be seen with the broken white skylight on the roof. The ninjas are jumping out of a window at ground height while taking off their ninja cloth around their heads, holding them in their hand, thus revealing that they both look like Cueball. The first one is already on the grassy ground beneath the window, his sword pointing down and to the left; the other just jumps from the window pane, his sword pointing up and to the right. Again, they have speech bubbles like before. It is not possible to tell which of the two ninjas from before is first out the window.]


  • In 1624: 2016, Cueball smashes through the ceiling, also hanging on a rope, to wake a person in a bed. Not as a threat though, but still a very similar situation.
  • In the title text of 163: Donald Knuth, Black hat reveals that he broke into Donald Knuth's house through the skylight as well.
  • Because of this comic, Stallman has been given a katana by fans of xkcd.
  • At his talk at JCCC3 (as well as in a note in xkcd: Volume Zero), Randall mentioned that the comic he originally published had the assassins say "free software," and Richard Stallman says "open source software." He swapped the two terms after complaints that Richard Stallman was opposed to the phrase "open source." Even after this change, he got an e-mail from Stallman himself saying that he didn't even want to be portrayed in the same comic as the words "open source."
















I am, I do, and I have. You're welcome! Alcazar84 (talk) 20:51, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

It's not "two ninjas were having fun", it's that two people were having fun. They dressed as ninjas to mess with him. There's no reason to think they actually are ninjas. That's just silly. —Kazvorpal (talk) 01:38, 22 October 2019 (UTC)