
Unfunny April Fool's Joke from the Magic Lantern Developers - skazka16
http://kukuruku.co/hub/it/unfunny-april-fools-joke-from-the-magic-lantern-developers
======
swang
Well this is depressing. I was always meaning to install ML, now I'm not sure
I can trust the developer for doing something so stupid and not feeling and
contrition for it.

Is al3x also g3gg0?

    
    
      so a warning to everyone being pranked yesterday:
      you are not prepared for serious shooting with magic
      lantern, if this was a real problem to you.
    
      why?
    
      if you use ML for business make sure a failure, no matter if serious issues or not so serious (like yesterday) wont get you in trouble!
    
      - take ML-free backup-cards with you
      - make yourself confident with rescue procedures and how to temporary disable ML
      - ML, especially "latest" versions can introduce troublesome behavior
    
      yes, its cool that ML is being used in a lot of serious stuff. we really love that.
      but we expect users to be prepared for the moment when ML is going nuts for some reason.
    
      this day will come.
    

[http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=14850.msg14...](http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=14850.msg143985#msg143985)

There is also a picture in that thread (scroll up).

~~~
socceroos
If anything, this gives you good reasons to trust these guys. Many people have
installed and are relying on ML without reading the warranty warnings. At
least they're pushing you to use good practices that stand you in good stead
with _any other dev and their product out there_.

~~~
dvirsky
There are warranty warnings on any open source platform. I wonder what would
happen if an open source database would decide to do this on april 1st :)

~~~
MatthewWilkes
I'm not sure how enforceable a warranty disclaimer is when it comes to
software that maliciously alerts the user to a permanent and irrecoverable
hardware error.

~~~
socceroos
maliciously?

------
ChristianBundy
At first I thought this was blown out of proportion, but the developer's
comments are infuriating. When an issue was filed, the response was "can you
post a video?" rather than "sorry, it's a joke – roll back for a fix". Even
the official explanation is just the developer complaining about users being
frustrated: [https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-
lantern/issue/2235/5dmk2-...](https://bitbucket.org/hudson/magic-
lantern/issue/2235/5dmk2-bricked-urgent-please#comment-17120450)

~~~
onion2k
Magic Lantern is _designed_ to be as simple as possible - you stick a file on
a memory card and that's it. ML is 'marketed' as something that 'just works'.
The developer needs to understand that the people who'll use it are,
essentially, IT newbies who won't always understand the need for backups,
understand what a roll back is, and won't follow instructions. That means they
won't necessarily understand the fix, and they will believe a message that
says their camera is bricked.

None of that means he shouldn't have played a joke on the users, but it
definitely means he ought to have thought it through more. And, as you say, he
should have had a much better response to people's understandably somewhat
panicked reaction.

------
fabulist
Definitely not a classy move; perhaps it would've been better to do it
immediately on boot-up, with an error message like FOOLS_FAULT, and after a
few seconds pop up a dialog that makes the "error" go away.

"Your camera is now bricked" isn't exactly the message I'd like to send to my
users.

------
kuon
While, as a developer, I love adding some easter eggs, I think this kind of
joke is not funny and tarnishes the open source community reputation.

An easter egg should make the user smiles and make him/her feels good and that
the developer cares about the software. That one is just mean.

While I can understand the developer making an error in not thinking it
through and making the joke, the handling of the case on the forum should have
been "I make a stupid joke, sorry, I'll make a fix right away, just rollback
for now".

To the people saying it's free software and the user is entitled to nothing,
I'll just ask: "Is it the world you want?" a world where there is no trust and
only the fear of being sued for money?

------
mcafeeryan92
Am I terrible for actually getting quite a chuckle reading this?

~~~
socceroos
I thought it was good and had a chuckle myself.

~~~
masters3d
"yes, its cool that ML is being used in a lot of serious stuff. we really love
that. but we expect users to be prepared for the moment when ML is going nuts
for some reason. this day will come."

------
maaaats
In some way, it's a lesson to not uncritically install whatever on your own
devices.

I install custom firmware on my Wi-Fi routers, my smartphone etc., never
really thought about how it would affect me if it were to get bricked in the
process.

------
chavesn
No, no one should be surprised that a nightly build had problems.

Yes, users should know what they are getting into.

No, the developer has no obligation to be held to a higher standard of
reliability.

Yes, the developer can really do whatever they want.

With all that said, can we at least agree that this shows _extremely_ poor
judgment from an engineering and product sense? Not only is this a terrible
way to achieve user trust, but it also doesn't make any users feel good. As a
user, why would I want to use a product that wants to make a fool out of me
and throw wrenches in a core feature for chuckles?

------
yitchelle
I remember a similar April's fools joke at one of my old workplace. This was
the late 80s. Well, one morning, when I booted up my computer, it echoed out a
message like "your computer has a virus" or something similar. The message was
also showing up on a number of other computers. It caused panic and confusion
in my workplace. It was a small company and computer knowledge was lacking. We
shut all the computer off and called in some computer specialist to checkout
the problem. It turned out that someone has modified autoexec.bat to echo the
string out as an April's fools joke. Well, the manager was not happy and it
caused the company a bit of money to recover. I think the person who did it
was given a dismissal warning.

------
InclinedPlane
A good natured "prank" is something you play on your friends, something they
will laugh about instantly after it happened. When you make other people's
misery the butt of your joke you're not being funny you're just being an
asshole. It's little different from what a bully does.

------
carlob
Am I the only one that finds it weird that the tm_mday field in the tm struct
is the only one that starts from 1?

I understand it doesn't make much sense to have tm_mday start from 0, but then
again even 3 as April seems weird, maybe they should all start at 1.

[http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908775/xsh/time.h.ht...](http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908775/xsh/time.h.html)

~~~
tzs
tm_mon and tm_wday are 0-based because the expectation was you'll probably be
using than as an index in a lookup table to get a month name (e.g., "Jan",
"Feb", ...) or day name (e.g., "Sun", "Mon", ...).

For day of month, we don't have special names for them. We just use the day
number. So tm_mday directly contains the day number.

~~~
carlob
That's right, but what about tm_yday then?

------
mTKUzaG3Kf
Posting from a new account, as this is apparently so controversial it will
probably get me shadowbanned.

Seriously, just how humorless and gullible do you have to be to not understand
that this was an April Fools' joke?

First, BSoDs are specific to Windows OSes. OK, fair enough, non-tech people
might not know this. But...

"Take a photo of a calendar, focusing on today's date."

If after reading this line you still don't understand that this is a joke, I
feel sorry for you.

The "rand() % 1000 == 13" probably causes the "BSoD" every time for the OP
because the RNG is not properly seeded, which is the real problem here.

I don't condone this joke or the developers' response, but I'm not going to
blame them for anything either. The negativity in this thread, however...

~~~
setpatchaddress
This is cruelty, not humor. Look at this from the perspective of a different
profession:

Why is it a problem if I'm a doctor and I put a non-lethal poison into every
few flu shuts on April 1st? Because April Fools.

This is how people who don't program view this sort of thing. You can say that
you feel sorry for them, but, in reality, you lose, because they'll never
trust you again. And they shouldn't.

------
veidr
Indeed, that's not funny.

But I was born in 1974, and I have never actually seen or heard a funny April
Fool's joke in my entire life.

~~~
mahouse
Then you will love Hacker News.

------
rukuu001
Holy %$! that's bad.

If you're paid to take photos, roll up to a gig with all the gear you tested
yesterday, and get this...good god.

~~~
reustle
If you're paid to take photos, you shouldn't be installing the latest nightly
build of some free software on your camera.

------
edandersen
Picture of the April Fool's prank:
[http://m.imgur.com/BeHi1H9](http://m.imgur.com/BeHi1H9)

~~~
Grue3
This is actually pretty funny. I mean, how can you _not_ realize this is a
joke?

~~~
reustle
It sounds legit up until the part where you're supposed to take a picture of
todays date on a calendar

------
gareth44
not in the slightest bit funny - al3x is a total idiot, and g3gg0's stupid
defensive answer makes it even worse.

------
minimaxir
Why would anyone even write a bsod() function? That's tempting fate.

~~~
pmjordan
You need SOME code to display debug info or at least a message when the
processor encounters an unrecoverable exception. Otherwise all crashes would
just freeze the system.

------
Mithaldu
I dislike the implication that any April Fools joke can be funny.

------
tempestn
Totally not cool! Everyone knows April Fool's pranks have to end at noon...

------
SchizoDuckie
That's a fucked up move..

------
adultSwim
Demand a refund!

Get over it. Seems pretty funny to me.

------
nickysielicki
This is hilarious to me and I won't apologize for saying that.

------
chrxss
LOL, looks like they made a fool out of you.

1st rule: be prepared fro April 1st 2nd rule: you cannot expect anything from
free software on the internet, it is free after all

------
happywolf
The first line on ML: "Magic Lantern is a free firmware addon for Canon EOS
DSLR cameras that adds a host of features to assist photographers and
videographers."

Read it again: it is free. If you really need QoS, pay someone to develop and
code review the firmware. I am not being a troll, some people just have so
much self-entitlement on something that is free.

~~~
gone35
Well; it really depends on your jurisdiction, but you should know that there
is such a thing as consumer protection and tort liability --yes, even for
things you get for free, like FOSS. See for instance [1,2].

Also, in the specific case of FOSS, this kind of jackass-ery might soon come
to an end anyway if/when the EU and UK follows through with their (relatively)
recent moves to introduce stronger software liability provisions (eg [3]).

[1] [http://www.ifross.org/en/what-legal-standard-liability-
and-w...](http://www.ifross.org/en/what-legal-standard-liability-and-warranty-
germany)

[2]
[http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/21st_cen...](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Course_Pages/21st_century_issues/21st_century_law/open_source_legal_01.htm#D.%20TORT%20LIABILITYclayton)

[3] [http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/workspace/analysts-
warn-[3]](http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/workspace/analysts-warn-\[3\])
vendors-on-software-liability-7284

~~~
happywolf
All these articles only mentioned the possibility of liability. [1] most
probably translated from German, and I cannot really understand what the
translated text means, so I have no comment.

[2]: It doesn't say for sure one will be liable "it is difficult to determine
with any certainty: (1) whether open source software licenses will be
enforceable, (2) whether open source software copyright will be valid, or (3)
whether open source software licenses will subject developers to tort
liability." [3] is more on vendor, which quite specifically on transaction
that carries monetary value. It is debatable if one still be regarded as
vendor even if he doesn't sell stuff. I will give the article benefit of
doubt.

Truth be told, the first successful litigation basically will turn off most
contributors: no one can be sure their codes are totally bug-free. Even if
that person totally wants to do good.

