Comic Transcript
MARK: Hey, Alex, I have a question.
ALEX: Shoot.
MARK: I’ve been asked to edit our quarterly budget… I don’t know why, but that’s not the point, the point is the budget has a line-item for Research and Development that is about five times the amount we put into Phil’s group.
ALEX: So?
MARK: So what do they do? Any time a new feature is added to Nifty Doorways, it’s been the result of something Phil and his guys did, not this group. I can’t see that they’ve contributed anything to ND at all!
ALEX: Oh, I see your problem. This isn’t software R&D. It’s legal R&D.
MARK: … Legal R&D?
ALEX: Right. Research into new ways to enforce Intellectual Property, new End User License Agreement wording, new disclaimers, and new ways to get around our warranty obligations.
MARK: And this costs us roughly ten times more than it costs us to pay for our programmers?
ALEX: Unfortunately they’ve made some breakthrough discoveries in the science of salary re-negotiations.
