Open Source

Why Open Source?

I believe in Open Source – that the power of the Community is significantly greater than that of closed units, that information should be free for all. I wouldn’t have ever started programming if it wasn’t for a basic tutorial about PHP I found on the Internet many years ago, free to read and understand. I work with Linux servers, running open source distributions, running open source programming languages through open source web servers, running the show from an Ubuntu work computer. The hard work of others and generosity of their time and expertise not only gave me the start in programming, but gave me the tools to do the job too. I find that more than a little inspiring, and I’ve spent quite some time working to repay some of that by contributing myself where I have had the skills and time.

Many people, especially in established corporations, seem to look down on OSS ¹ as if it is in someway inferior to that which can be purchased at great expense from vendors that I won’t give the free advertising to ². I’d be astonished if any of them could actually say hand-on-heart that the copy of Windows they are running makes them as productive, and gives as much enjoyment to use, as the copy of Ubuntu³ installed on my laptop. Being an Open Source advocate doesn’t mean settling for less – often you get more.

My Contributions to Open Source

This list will be updated shortly with the projects that I run, as and when I move them all onto Github, check back soon. There will be a couple of new ones launching soon as well, including a new, opinionated micro Framework based on Rack that offers easy extensibility into moderate sized applications, an easy extension structure, and screaming performance.