Sorry for the silence and the unentertaining posts so far. I’m pretending I have a job for an entire week, and my boss (who I’d never met before) is here. I’m drinking lots of coffee not to fall asleep during meetings. So far, so good…

Luckily, rms of emacs and GNU fame showed up and gave his usual “free as in freedom” speech. He’s always entertaining on his own right, and I managed to corner him to fondle his beard and strike a pose.

But seriously… I do like to poke fun at rms, but I do owe him a debt of gratitude.  For those of you unfamiliar with Richard Stallman (or rms as he’s called among us geeks), rms has been a pivotal figure in the computing industry since the 1970’s.  His free software movement has been the basis of software the world over. The tools used to write the software in your iPhone and iPad, as well as the software running in satellites, not to mention web servers, and pretty much everything else, are in part possible by a revolution he started in the mid 80’s, and to which I have devoted my entire programming career. Part of the reason software is so prevalent and inexpensive today is due not in small part to a life of sacrifice in the pursuit of freedom.

In the early 1990’s, a young pimple faced boy from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico was welcomed by rms into his MIT office as an equal. He took the time to encourage me into a life writing free software, which in his opinion, was the only ethical way of marshaling one’s creative forces. I was amazed at his candor and his willingness to dedicate such a large portion of his time to let me sit around his office for hours, and ask him a barrage of questions, while offering the occasional advice. He followed through with me for years, through random projects, until I took the job I hold today, writing unencumbered software that is ethically aligned with what inspired me decades ago.

This year, Red Hat achieved $1 billion dollars in revenue in one year, while selling freely licensed software, and it all started with a hard headed idea of taking fate into your own hands, and not bending to the will of software companies restricting your freedoms.

Here’s to freedom!

p.s. This is the view across the street from the meetings…