A truly free mind
When complaining on IRC about the time I spent on writing articles for this weblog, someone jokingly said that I should put a PayPal banner on my website. But I tend to hate paypal.
But another thought struck me then, which is that I don’t want to recieve any money for the work that I do for this site. All the texts on this site are licensed for redistribution, as long as you give me credit, and keep the copyright notices intact (details). I don’t do this because I’m so philanthropic, I just want anyone to be able to take my texts or code or images or anything else, and modify it for their needs and redistribute the result.
Basically this has happened long before I came into contact with the free software movement. I had written some code that I wanted to give away to friends. I saw that they were using it, which felt good. But I was young and naive at that time.
Later I found out about the existence of Linux, and the idea of choice appealed to me. I installed it, and gradually became aware of all the projects that surrounded it: the GNU Project, the Free Software Foundation (FSF), the League for Programming Freedom. As time went on, I came into contact with GIMP. To install it, you needed lesstif. I had heard of Motif before, and I thought it was good that there was a project that wanted to provide a free version of it. That lesstif has been licensed under a non-free license for a long time didn’t bother me then. It was better than nothing.
Gradually I became aware of the real reason for the existence of organizations such as the FSF. I started releasing my own code under licenses such as the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL).
As I started to become more involved in the free software movement, starting with the GNU Translation Project, I came into contact with the real values of licensing code under free licenses, and I learned to understand not only the virtues, but also the responsibilities that come with code released under the GPL. Being a user of (almost) only free software, I was already aware of the expectations of other programmers, and I learned to apply those feelings to my own software.
My code became free, and my mind followed. It was a gradual process, but I can’t say I’m sorry it happened. I’m glad. But paypal still sucks.
Discussion Area - Leave a Comment