Dave Mohyla is the president and founder of dtidata.com, a hard drive recovery facility based in Tampa, Florida.
TM: Where are you based? What does your company do?
DTI Data recovery is based in South Pasadena, Florida which is a suburb of Tampa. We have been here for over 10 years. We operate a bio-metrically secured class 100 clean room where we perform hard drive recovery on all types of hard disks, from laptop hard drives to multi drive RAID systems.
Since the very beginning, directories (of any kind) have had a very central role in the internet. (I have recently grown fond of Free Web Directory. Even Slashdot can be considered a directory: a collection of great news and invaluable user-generated comments. As far as software is concerned, doing a quick search on Google about software directories will return the free (as in freedom) software directories like Savannah, SourceForge, Freshmeat and so on, followed by shareware and freeware sites such as FileBuzz, PCWin Download Center and All Freeware (great if you're looking for shareware and freeware, but definitely less comprehensive than their free-as-in-freedom counterparts).
Mark Shuttleworth is the founder of Thawte, the first Certification Authority to sell public SSL certificates. After selling Thawte to Verisign, Mark moved on to training as an astronaut in Russia and visiting space. Once he got back he founded Ubuntu, the leading GNU/Linux distribution. He agreed on releasing a quick interview to Free Software Magazine.
I read David Jonathon's article Anybody Up To Writing Good Directory Software? the other day, which got me thinking about software directories in general. As David mentioned, many of the software directories one finds when doing a quick google search are free as in beer, not as in freedom. But what interests me is the software directories that already exist, providing a combination of both free as in beer software, and open source software. Sites such as Freeware Downloads and Shareware Download don't advertise themselves as providing free as in liberty software, but each of them have a good selection of open source software available... if you know where to look.
If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder! Worldlabel.com, a manufacture of labels offers Open Office / Libre Office labels templates for downloading in ODF format which will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels
A little while ago, while talking in the #drupal mailing list, I showed my latest creation to one of the core developers there. His reaction was "Wow, I am always surprised what people use Drupal for". His surprise is somehow justified: I did create a site for a bunch of entertainers in Perth, a company set to use Drupal to take over the world with Entertainers.Biz.
Update: since writing this article, I have updated the system so that the whole booking process happens online. I will update the article accordingly!
More and more people are discovering free software. Many people only do so after weeks, or even months, of using it. I wonder, for example, how many Firefox users actually know how free Firefox really is—many of them realise that you can get it for free, but find it hard to believe that anybody can modify it and even redistribute it legally.
When the discovery is made, the first instinct is to ask: why do they do it? Programming is hard work. Even though most (if not all) programmers are driven by their higher-than-normal IQs and their amazing passion for solving problems, it’s still hard to understand why so many of them would donate so much of their time to creating something that they can’t really show off to anybody but their colleagues or geek friends.
Sure, anybody can buy laptops, and just program. No need to get a full-on lab or spend thousands of dollars in equipment. But... is that the full story?
It dawned on me the other day, as I was shopping for the dozens of gifts it seems I have to buy every December, that Santa Claus is the most successful open source project in history. (Bridget @ Illiterarty would agree with that). Santa Claus is essentially a marketing development that is embodied by everyone who stuffs a sock, gives a gift, hosts a dinner or wishes Merry Christmas over the holiday season.
When I first started thinking about Free Software Magazine, I was feeling enthusiastic about the dream. I had Dave, Gianluca, and Alan willing to help me, I had established members of the free software community willing to help me out, I had writers volunteering their time and energy for free, and I had a generous offer from OpenHosting for servers, all before I'd proved myself. There was a sense of excitement in the air, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could make this work.
Comments
Pretty straight-forward
Let us know how you contribute to the free software movement. If you contribute in multiple ways just let us know the primary way or choose other and comment.
Install, Document, Teach.
Although I've done all of the above, most of my contribution has been in the form of installing, documenting and teaching, which I sort of think of as a single task with three parts. (Much of the teaching has been in the form of e-mail exchanges and IRC/IM conversations which eventually become documentation in the form of web pages.)
All of the above
I do all of these things, but would like to emphasized monetary donations to F/OSS, as it is really easy for anyone to do & even small sums make developers happy.
Those that learn, serve also
All of us, who are attempting to learn the 'nuts and bolts' of FS, are part of the contribution, too. As soon as we learn enough, our contributions will start to become useful in one way or another.
Online publications, like Free Software Magazine, are a valuable aid for those who are trying to learn.
Translations!
I've translated a few short pieces of Free software into Spanish. I can't really write code, but I want to return as much as I want to the free software movement.
That's an important contribution
Translations are a very important contribution, both for software and for websites. I see this all the time in FSFE. Most of our webpages are in 10+ languages. I think translators really display the community spirit that free software exists to foster. No one becomes a translator becuase they want to get famous, translators must be motivated by helping others.
GPLv3 - strengthening free software
Helping others
Yes, maybe. Ever since I switched to using mostly free software, I've tried to play fair - something I never did with proprietary software vendors. If people are developing software that I use for fun and profit, I SHOULD give something in return. I found out that Free Software is moralizing. And since I can only write terrible code in Gambas, I'd rather spend my time doing something that actually helps others.
patches
i consider "writing patches" separate from "writing code". my patches have never garnered me the title "contributor" or "team member" on a software application's website, so i think the community would also agree that there is a difference between "code" and "patches".
my patches primarily address bugs that i've discovered (accompanying a bug report) or that i've encountered and the first to solve, though i've addressed "new functionality" a time or two.
with a job and family i really don't have the time to do more than "write patches".
i also try to help users out when i know something they want/need to know with detailed mailing list posts or website comments.
that's my small contribution to foss.
Patches are awesome
Don't underrate patching existing software! It's what makes free software go. I think it's easier to start software than it is to maintain and improve existing code. It's also an enormous boost to the people who do write software when you start getting contributions. So far, I've only had one package that got that far, but it was cool, just the same.
I've started more projects than I've contributed patches to, but I'm not so sure that's anything to brag about. :-/
Hard choice
The hard thing is deciding which thing that I do has the most impact. Is it more important that I write documentation, promote the ideas behind free software in my writing, or that I actually write some free software?
I don't write a large volume of stuff myself, but I do practice what I preach. And I think maybe that's why I had to pick "write software" on this list. It's not what I do most, but it may be what I do that's most important.
I think that, aside from the obvious benefits of growing the pool of software that is available and solving specific technical problems, it also gives you an important perspective on the ethical, pragmatic, and economic aspects that surround software. We have a lot of funny ideas pushed on to us by various special interests, and the only way to get a feel for how things really work is to try it yourself.
I don't write free software out of some kind of martyr complex, I do it because it's fun, and for me, it's the most practical way to get what I want done ("If you want it done right...").
I also picked it because it's what I did today! Voila, fresh out of the oven:
Palimpsest 0.1-alpha (Release Notes).
"The purpose of Palimpsest is to unify access to metadata (especially attribution and licensing data) in a range of multimedia files. It implements a plugin scheme for fully-supporting native metadata in specific filetypes, as well as an XMP scanner for unrecognized files."
It's only a week since I started writing it, so it's still pretty primitive, but I plan to extend it considerably. I'll probably write a blog about it when it actually supports more than GIF files (don't ask me why I started with GIF, it wasn't exactly a rational decision, it just sort of happened -- PNG and JPG are coming soon, then probably SVG and Ogg Vorbis, as well as about 3 more abstraction layers in the interface which will make it a lot more useful).
All of the above
I do all of the above. But my primary and biggest F/OSS activity is advocacy. I did hundreds of installations for anybody who asks me for it in the past 10 years.
I am an associate member of FSF (member no. 3822) for the past two years. In this way I make monetory contributions to the Free software movement.
the fifth item hasn't been voted yet!!
I hope we keep it like that..
-gerel
Other: lobbying
I meet with politicians and tell them why our laws should protect software users, developers, and distributors against software patents. I also tell them how to do this since the mechanics of making the correct change in the law is usually obfuscated within some other more laudable change.
GPLv3 - strengthening free software
Hey, I do that too
That was precisely what drew me to free software. I AM a political activist (in a minor leadership role), and I decided to write an ordinance proposal making my city's administration run only free software - mostly for the lower TCO, and transparency issues. But I thought it would be hypocritical to propose that when I wasn't running a free OS myself (I did use Firefox, OOo and WordPress, among other Free Software products). Now my computer runs free software almost exclusively.
Primary Way
In the end I had to decide that financial support of the Free Software Foundation is the most important/primary. If it wasn't for FSF the poll wouldn't even be relevant.
"If it wasn't for FSF"
I think you're overstating the importance of the FSF to free software, just a little bit...
The GNU project, which is what the FSF directly supports, accounts for roughly 25% of free software. Another 25% is in several unaffiliated large projects (some of which are among the most important on the desktop: X, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Linux itself). The remaining 50% is created by "the field" -- independent developers.
What would principally happen if there were suddenly no FSF today:
Of course, that's if they disappeared today. They were more important in the past. Had FSF not invented the GPL, or originally written the GNU system, it probably would've taken longer to discover the copyleft idea and that would have had disastrous consequences.
However, FSF didn't invent free software, they just gave it a name and a definition.
.. and the legal base!
I really hope that the FSF will not suddenly disappear because I consider their role more crucial than that of OSI or similar organisations. It was the FSF who devised the license which is today used by ca. 75% of all FOSS projects. And currently they kill themselves by coming up with a next version by wrapping their brains around legally, economically and politically difficult issues to which other leaders in the community show no interest or sometimes even disrespect.
I agree with you, FSF is not the body/group of people who has contributed most of the free code in the world today. But without their contribution not so much code would (and perhaps could) have been written at all.
This is not about quantity, but about doing the right things. So, I think respect where respect is due.
bits of three options
I selected "other" because I write and distribute free software, advocate and teach it and also have contributed documentation.
Okay not everyone can (or should) code and it's good that a lot of people advocate but right now what concerns me is the low number of people contributing documentation. I think this is one of the great plus points of the free software world. The fact that you and I can join in by writing HOWTOs, guides and general tips means we can all take part without actually having to write code.
I suspect that more people contribute than this poll indicates though because at first I thought it meant writing help files and the like for specific packages. Of course it can also mean writing helpful webpages, posting HOWTOs to TLDP, contributing to WIKIs etc. All of this is documentation - especially because the nature of software documentation has changed. Yes I still read books but increasingly the "documentation" I use includes bits gleaned from forums, mailing lists and other websites.
Mostly translation, testing/bug reporting and advocating
The largest part of my contribution to free software is translation into Slovenian language (my main work is on KDE). I also try to regularly test beta releases of various GNU/Linux distributions and report bugs that I found. I also do a lot of work by telling people about free software. I'm using my blog for this and submit links to Digg, Stumble Upon, del.icio.us and reddit. Telling people I meet in real life or online about free software is also a thing I often do. I've also started to work on learning how to program in C++/Qt so that I will some day be able to help even with programming.
2 of the Above
My small business is based on Open Source / Free software. I provide solutions based on Linux / free software. I encourage my clients to buy a box set, and exlpain to them that it is simply a nice gsture to the developers and that there are no strings attached and that they can install it on as many machines as they want etc. I aslo make it a point of buying almost evry box set of my favourite distro.