(Saying hello in my favorite programming language, Ruby, which of course is open source.)
Why an Open Source Blog?
Open Source, or Free Software, is more than just something you don’t have to pay for. More importantly, it grants you the freedom to use software the way you need to and not the way its vendor wants you to use it. This freedom for developers, administrators, and users needs to be extended and to be defended: against attempts of politics and economy to ban it or to threaten its users, against commercial abuse, but also against too naive and optimistic fans who believe that the mere growth of open source usage would automatically create a more liberal society. Though the idea of open source was linked to a more political world improvement movement of the 1970s, it has steered away from that during the last few years. The advantage of this fact is that open source is being used by more and more people who are not deeply into IT, and even by corporations, politics, and administration. The downside of it, though, is that a decreasing part of the open source community thinks about political implications. Only few people are able to recognize threats against free software and even against free society — such as some important politicians’ Big Brother mentality, data-hungry corporations, or lobby pressure to start software patents in the EU.
With this blog, I’d like to keep you up to date about new and exciting open source tools, but also keep a look at the state of society — software development, like any other human activity, rather takes place in the real world than in an ivory tower. In this respect, I will ignore any “What’s this got to do with open source/software/computers/IT?”-style comments.
Why am I doing an Open Source Blog?
Since 1995, I’ve been using open source software for nearly every task where there’s a free alternative available. For me, the Linux operating system, the Apache web server, the MySQL database server, and the PHP web scripting language (yes: LAMP) are the most important of these tools, my everyday toolbox. To help other developers to get used to these programs and to persuade them of their advantages, I wrote a few (German language) textbooks and articles about them.
I put my own little tools and teaching programs under open source licenses, usually under the GNU GPL. Since April 2007, developing open source software has even been my main profession: I’m working for papaya Software GmbH in Cologne, Germany, as a developer of the PHP-based web content management system papaya CMS.
Please note that I’m not an open source dogmatist but an IT pragmatist. I do know Windows and work with it, I’m the author of a textbook about Adobe Flash, and I do use commercial programs when they are useful. To create an open and just society with equal chances (in which free software licenses are only one small aspect of many) and to find a future worth living for all mankind seems far more important to me than to fanatically adore open source software.
