Discussion
Four years ago, I wrote about my early years on computers, how it all started. It ends around 2001.
It focuses mostly on how I got into computers, into Linux, and a programming career.
I plan to continue that story this weekend, with one that focuses more on how my views evolved - how computers, FLOSS, and various communities shaped me, where I started from, and where I am today.
@rl_dane Link to the 4 year old recap is in the original toot! Though, it's behind a markdown link, so here it is in its raw glory: https://asylum.madhouse-project.org/blog/2022/08/31/how-it-all-started/
If 1993 me would look at me, he'd recoil in horror. So do I, when looking back.
The past ~30 years have been A Journey™.
I'm not even sure how detailed I want this story to be. There are some things better left unsaid. So maybe I'll focus on... not even sure what.
Originally, I wanted to do a kind of "license evolution", but... that doesn't quite capture what I want to talk about. It's more than licenses.
Yet, I don't want to dig too deep into hardcore politics and religion.
Perhaps the best way to approach this would be to focus on how I viewed FLOSS over the years. That'd give it a nice framing, I think.
From being perfectly happy with proprietary software, and dreaming of working at BigTech, through finding FLOSS, choosing copyleft over permissive licenses, with disappointments and lost illusions along the way, to arriving to the present day, with a wishful look at the future.
Thinking back, I can pinpoint some very precise turning points. I know the exact day I realized I no longer want to work for or support BigTech. I mean... at that point, I didn't realize this immediately, but one particular event led to a big "fuck no", and a radically changed course. It took a few years to realize what that event meant.
@algernon
Link? ;)
I think my history with computing looks like this:
Legend:
^ (increase in mood/enthusiasm)
v (decrease in enthusiasm
^ watching WarGames and similar movies in the 1980s
^ getting heavy into Star Trek (TNG) in the early 90s
^ going to college and starting out (but never completing) a bachelor's in CompSci
^ getting a great tech job in the early 2000s
v working with actual programmers and realizing that they don't actually know much of anything about computers
v surviving outsourcing in the late 2000s and watching an amazing work environment turn into a toxic sweatshop
v "crypto"
v "NFT"
v AI everything
v All tech companies are literally the most evil things on the earth, now
v Bastard techbros taught computers (which are inherently logic machines) how to lie, and I'll never get over that