My Open Source Story column

Do you have an open source story to share? Tell us about your favorite open source tool, your involvement in an open source project, or how your organization uses open source solutions. Submit your proposal.

Polishing cars wasn't in my job description

"Whose turn is it to prep the JavaCar demo?" I asked my colleague. As I suspected, the answer was, "Yours!" However, I wasn't too disappointed, as I was happy to show off…

A road trip into the Free Software Foundation's early days

On my 21st birthday in 1998, I received a phone call from Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation (FSF), to tell me the root password of the…

How open source took me from a beginner coder to a credited contributor

I'd like to share my experiences with Free Software Melbourne, its free software workshop, and, more importantly, what has happened since then because it's kinda cool—it's not…

How a love for open source led to the first Ubuntu magazine

It was late 2006 (if my memory serves me right), and I was still using Windows XP. Right around the corner, though, was the (now dreaded) Windows Vista. I really didn't like…

A kid in an open source candy store

I was introduced to open source through immersion when I learned C and Perl in college. Compared to previous programming languages like BASIC and Pascal, which I had learned…

How open source found me

This isn't a story about me finding open source—this is about how open source chose me. What I knew about open source back then was Linux and everything GNU. Many of the tools…

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