Free software

I'm a very enthusiastic supporter of the Free Software and Open Source movements (often collectively referred to as F/OSS), which despite technical and philosophical differences share similar visions.

He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body. --Thomas Jefferson, letter to Isaac McPherson, 1813

A rapidly increasing and already huge number of people in the world today are benefitting from free software. I have free software to thank for:

giving me the opportunity to learn and work with some of the best computer systems and best programmers in the world, in an extremely exciting, cutting edge online community, for free,
an amazing job that I enjoy a lot,
the security which comes through my knowledge of free-software-based systems and programming languages: that if I should ever need to look for another job, I'll easily find one that is well-paid and fun, and last but not least
in many cases providing superior alternatives to proprietary products.

My contributions

Obviously I'm very grateful to the free software community for the above reasons, and I've always felt that I owe it something in return. So I've made several programs I wrote freely available, and also contributed patches/suggestions to many other free software projects.