User: Andrew89
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This user knows that GNU's Not Unix. |
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This user is playing free media formats. |
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This user is interested in contributing to End Software Patents. |
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This user is interested in contributing to Defective by Design. |
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This user supports the Open Document Format. |
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This user supports the FSF's group campaign against ACTA. |
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Not Facebook'd ! You won't find me on Facebook |
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| Username | Andrew89 |
|---|---|
| Full name | Andrew Ter-Grigoryan |
| roeplay@lavabit.com | |
| XMPP/Jabber | AndrewT@jabber.org |
| Website | https://diasp.org/people/17049 |
| Blog | |
| Microblog | |
| IRC | AndrewT (irc.freenode.net) |
| Groups | |
| Learning | |
| Spoken languages | English |
| Programming languages | |
| Identities | |
| Interests | |
| City | Bowling Green |
| State | Kentucky |
| Country | United States of America |
My Free Software Odyssey
FSF member # 8401.
My entry into the world of free software really began when I tried Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon). Prior to that, I was using an assortment of free software applications on Windows, and I had heard of "open source" and "Linux" well before that.
Eventually, I became more ardent about free software ideals and researched the history of the movement, Richard Stallman, the GNU project, etc. This motivated me to join the FSF. I wanted to start using a completely free distribution, and Trisquel GNU/Linux was the only halfway decent looking one. I was actively involved in the Trisquel project from winter of 2009 until spring of 2011, particularly in documentation and bug testing. The experience was worthwhile. In early June of 2011, having had enough of the very real disadvantages of a fully-free system, I decided to migrate to Fedora. Fedora is not a 100% free distribution, but besides this OS being of the highest caliber, Fedora Project is more committed to free software goals than most of the other popular distributions. Free software has come a long way, and perhaps one day I will have come so far that using a fully-free distribution is a seamless experience. I'm still waiting.
For years, I've avoided Facebook. Since mid-2011, however, I have been a part of the Diaspora community. Hopefully its keeps growing by leaps and bounds and changes the social networking world. The battle is being fought uphill and it's going to be a tough one. Please, sign up!
Like many, I find myself somewhere in between the uncompromising dogmatism of Richard Stallman and the devil-may-care approach of Linus Torvalds. My ideals are about the same as Richard Stallman's, but realistically, if free software ever wins out, it probably won't be because society begins demanding freedom from its software. The masses don't have that kind of moral clarity.
I still call my operating system GNU/Linux, because I believe in giving credit where it is due (there are far too many that have never even heard of the GNU project, and think Linus is a god-genius), and I still prefer the term "free software", because "open source" misleads people as to the main ethical value of the software -- freedom for each and every user.
