Mar 04, 2026 23:00:00

'Dependency' is an illustration that satirizes the current situation in the IT industry, where 'huge projects depend on personal projects and easily collapse'

Most of the software running around the world relies on some form of open source software, and if a problem occurs in one piece of software, it can pose a chain reaction of risk to all software around the world. One illustration that succinctly expresses the fragility of the IT industry is xkcd's ' Dependency ,' and several derivative illustrations and animations of this work have been posted online.

xkcd: Dependency

https://xkcd.com/2347/

The Xkcd thing, now interactive | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47230704

The results of open source projects are used worldwide, and a survey conducted in 2024 found that 95% of software relies on some form of open source software. This makes it more likely that a vulnerability discovered in a single piece of open source software will affect systems around the world. In fact, when the serious OpenSSL bug ' Heartbleed ' was discovered in 2014, and the 'Log4Shell' vulnerability was discovered in the Java Log4j library in 2021, IT products around the world were affected, requiring significant time and cost to address.

Why does the vulnerability 'Log4Shell (CVE-2021-44228)' discovered in the Java Log4j library have such a big impact on the world? - GIGAZINE

'Dependency' is an illustration that expresses the state of the IT industry. Published on the satirical illustration site xkcd , it shows that 'modern digital infrastructure' is supported by 'a project that an unknown person living in Nebraska has been maintaining thanklessly since 2003.' This illustration is frequently cited as a clear representation of the situation in which 'large projects are heavily dependent on unpaid personal projects.'

Many derivative works of Dependency have also been made public by volunteers. For example, a work that remade Dependency into interactive art is available at the following link.

XKCD Dependency
https://editor.p5js.org/isohedral/full/vJa5RiZWs

When you access the link above, the dependencies will be displayed on the screen. You can move each block with your mouse on a PC or by touch on a smartphone. If you remove the 'personal project that has been maintained since 2003,' all of the projects will collapse.

'Dependency,' a cartoon showing the fragility of the IT industry, is remade into an interactive work - YouTube

Reddit users have also posted images detailing the current situation, including comments such as 'WebAssembly (WASM) and V8 are making the web unstable,' 'AI is supposed to be boosting the entire IT industry, but the balance is being disrupted,' 'When Cloudflare or AWS go down, it affects the entire internet,' 'Microsoft is trying to attack from the outside,' and 'We are also dependent on physical infrastructure such as undersea cables.'