This page is intended to give a little insight into what things I am generally interested in, and why. Well basically it is maybe only a random collection of ramblings about what goes on in my life.
Programming and computer science is a passion of mine since my early youth. I got pulled into this by articles of children's magazines in the GDR (at the age of around 9-10). They had very nice introductions into programming and computers in general back then, despite the non-availability of computers to average people. So I mostly 'programmed' on paper at this time. Around the age of 12 I first got my hands on a real computer. This has been a great experience. I attended courses at school back then where I wrote my first little programs.
At the age of 15 I got my first own computer, a C64 (which was kindof obsolete already at that time). Now I was able to learn some more in-depth things like assembly language and graphics programming. I was very proud of writing a mandelbrot generator. Unbelievable today, I let the computer calculate for hours (days even), only to get some funky graphics out of it. But it teached me some interesting things, like, how to use the floppy CPU as coprocessor or how to implement fixed point arithmetics in assembly language. There were also a couple of interesting low level tricks to artificially increase the max resolution (320x200) or number of colors (16, with only 4 usable in one bitmap at one time) with which I could spend my time.
Nowadays my interest in computer science can be found mainly in two areas, graphics programming and algorithms/data structures (which, of course, overlap). I very much enjoy to learn or find myself interesting solutions to difficult and/or exiting problems. I guess it is sometimes very hard for my girlfriend to live on my side, when a problem is nagging me. I find it hard to rest when a problem is not solved. I think I need to learn how to 'switch off' my thinking sometimes to allow myself to focus on the real world. I find it interesting from a psychological point of view that I have most good ideas after not thinking about it at all. That's why I'm looking for distraction when I'm stuck with a problem. But this does not really belong here...
My first confrontation with Free Software was back in 1998 when I bought a box of Suse Linux (5.x I think). At this time I really had no clue what Free Software means, after all, the box was not free at all for me. At this time I was very unhappy with the general direction that Microsoft was going with Windows. DOS was kind of ok for me (although it was worse then most stuff I've seen on other computers before), but I didn't like how Windows took control over the computer away from me. With Linux I immediately felt warm and like home. It was a similar feeling like in the old C64 days, beeing very close to the actual computer. Later on (when internet access became available) I started trying Debian Linux, then FreeBSD and NetBSD while I let loose completely of Windows (that was around 2002 I think). Nowadays I'm more or less settled with Ubuntu and Fedore boxes.
Playing and working with these OSes naturally brought me close to the more general ideas of Free and Open Source Software. These have been elaborated already elsewhere and I am not going to repeat this here. Recently Robert Schuster posted an interesting article which sums up the point that I also see here. Beeing able to program a computer seems like some kind of magic to most people. And indeed it is a very special talent pulling together creativity, knowledge and technical understanding. And it represents a certain kind of power. Generally we expect from people who have a certain power (think of politicians, doctors, architects) to use their power in a responsible way. In my opinion people should expect this from software or hardware developers as well. To me, the Free Software way of life represents one way to show responsibility. This (besides the aspect of having fun in hacking) is why I contribute to Free Software projects, most notably GNU Classpath, Escher and my own pet project Xebece. However, I'd like to distance myself from unrealistic zealotry. I generally respect proprietary software businesses as well as Free Software communities and businesses. The world is not black and white. Only because a few large proprietary software corporations have very arguable business practices doesn't mean that proprietary software is generally evil. The line to be drawn here is orthogonal to the Free vs. proprietary software debate. My opinion is that Free Software is generally a better thing because I very much value my freedom. Others might not value their freedom as high as me (especially when it comes to software) and I respect that. However I have no respect at all for business practices that effectively push the users (== the customer!) against the wall (almost treating them like criminals) to squeeze every cent out of them.