TildeHash Posted July 16, 2010 Share Posted July 16, 2010 I am Jacob Barkdull. I consider myself a Free Software advocate. I have spent the last few years becoming familiar with Unix, GNU, and Linux. The operating system I use is Debian GNU+Linux-libre, simply because it liberates my computer usage. I do not use proprietary software (software licensed with the sole purpose of restricting the users' computing.) I am an Internet centric developer -- I shouldn't say that, internet languages are just what I prefer -- my first actual usage of Free Software was at the age of 16 when I received an old web server from my father (I held an interest in Free Software since I got my first computer). The web server was an old single-core Intel 1800Hz running Fedora 6 with KDE 3.x. My first task was to install Fedora 9 on the system, I did so without too much effort -- the machine just ran in my bedroom and I occasionally checked in on the installation. A web server being my first introduction to the operating system, I became more interested in learning how the web technologies I used every day worked. Naturally, I learned HTML, SHTML, CSS, JavaScript, and -- my favorite -- PHP. It was only later that I started learning C / C++, Python, Perl, and the others. I've always been a political person (since adulthood), so as with everything else in life, I found software to have political and ethical issues, and I became interested in the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL) -- which is a Free Software license originally written by Richard Stallman in 1989 for the GNU Project, and now authored by the Free Software Foundation. Richard Stallman's intentions with the GNU GPL was to eliminate the political and ethical issues in software, and liberate the user of the software. I believe it is important to expose these political, social, and ethical issues with proprietary software, and advocate the usage of Free Software, while advocating against proprietary software usage in education, business, government, and personal computing. I believe that, in this day and age -- with millions or even billions of people using software everyday, for most of the day -- that software users online are a community, much like our neighborhood communities, but this is only true when these users cooperate, collaborate, and communicate. Needless to say, I find Free Software communities are much more pleasant than proprietary software pseudo-communities (I say pseudo because while the users may cooperate to the most of their extent, the developers of the software do not), because in Free Software communities the users contribute, the developers contribute, and the people openly cooperate and discuss opinions, good or bad. I use Free Software because I like supporting such social freedom and cooperation. It is important that we all have respect for our computing freedom, especially in this age of increasing dependence on technology. Free Software encourages software development by everyone who is able. Under the GNU GPL a program's source code must be available to the user of the licensed software, and the user must be free to use the software, study and change the software, give away or sell copies of the software, and give away or sell a changed version of the software. I do not know everything about Free Software, but I believe my views might change the way many people view these issues. I have written many misconceived, and utterly wrong articles in the past, during my learning of the operating system. And I apologize for them. They are on "blog" websites, and not on this website, TildeHash.com, but you may be able to find them simply by browsing this site. My criticizing of anything will be very rare. I feel that criticism is very useful, but that it's also better not to cause the "problem" that ultimately receives criticism. And because my criticism often matches the criticism already voiced by somebody else, it's better that I be involved in those discussions -- so long as the discussion is constructive -- rather than having the same discussion here. So I ask for your criticism as long as it's constructive. I invite you to contact me for whatever you may wish to ask me. Straight from my site http://www.tildehash.com/?page=author I apologize for being impersonal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salathe Posted July 16, 2010 Share Posted July 16, 2010 Awesome, now are you going to introduce yourself? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TildeHash Posted July 29, 2010 Author Share Posted July 29, 2010 Awesome, now are you going to introduce yourself? No. I'm not going to participate in this forum anymore. PHPFreaks' moderators don't allow people (me) to announce and ask for cooperation on PHP projects. And I don't know why, all of the people on this forum are learning PHP and the moderators want to deny cooperation and collaboration with that knowledge? Doesn't make any sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
premiso Posted July 29, 2010 Share Posted July 29, 2010 T.T Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smither07 Posted August 3, 2010 Share Posted August 3, 2010 LOL! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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