Uwe Hermann | A slightly paranoid Debian developer

I somehow managed to break the comment submission feature, i.e. nobody could post comments here. Should be fixed again now. If you posted a comment and it didn't appear on the site until now, it was lost. Please resubmit.

Sorry for the mess.

Thomas Breitner has released his (German) thesis "Freie Software - Motivation und Engagement" which examines the motives of Free Software developers for working on Free Software.

It features a good historical introduction of the Free Software movement in general and discusses topics such as geeks, nerds, hacking etc. The main part is about the social aspects, though, especially motivation and commitment in the Free Software community.

The results of four interviews with famous Free Software developers are a major part of the thesis. There developers are:

• Werner Koch, author and maintainer of GnuPG and head of office of the Free Software Foundation Europe
• Martin Michlmayr, former Debian Project Leader
• Marco Schulze, CEO of NightLabs
• Harald Welte, head of the netfilter Core Team and GPL enforcing guru of gpl-violations.org fame

I'm through half of the thesis now and really recommend reading it, as it gives some interesting insights into the social aspects of Free Software development.

(via Harald Welte's blog)

# apt-get update && apt-get install cowsay

# cowsay "Cowsay is a pretty funny program. I mean,
it generates talking cows -- how could it get any cooler?"
 ________________________________________
/ Cowsay is a pretty funny program. I    \
| mean, it generates talking cows -- how |
\ could it get any cooler?               /
 ----------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (oo)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

# cowsay -p "OK. A paranoid cow would be cooler."
 _____________________________________
< OK. A paranoid cow would be cooler. >
 -------------------------------------
        \   ^__^
         \  (@@)\_______
            (__)\       )\/\
                ||----w |
                ||     ||

# cowsay -f bunny "Did you know there's lots of other animals
you can draw with cowsay? Have a look at /usr/share/cowsay/cows
and use the -f option. There are even web frontends and a Wikipedia
article for cowsay..."
 ________________________________________
/ Did you know there's lots of other     \
| animals you can draw with cowsay? Have |
| a look at /usr/share/cowsay/cows and   |
| use the -f option. There are even web  |
| frontends and a Wikipedia article for  |
\ cowsay...                              /
 ----------------------------------------
  \
   \   \
        \ /\
        ( )
      .( o ).

# cowsay -f dragon-and-cow 'OK sucker, now stop drawing cows and get some work done!'
 ______________________________________
/ OK sucker, now stop drawing cows and \
\ get some work done!                  /
 --------------------------------------
                       \                    ^    /^
                        \                  / \  // \
                         \   |\___/|      /   \//  .\
                          \  /O  O  \__  /    //  | \ \           *----*
                            /     /  \/_/    //   |  \  \          \   |
                            @___@`    \/_   //    |   \   \         \/\ \
                           0/0/|       \/_ //     |    \    \         \  \
                       0/0/0/0/|        \///      |     \     \       |  |
                    0/0/0/0/0/_|_ /   (  //       |      \     _\     |  /
                 0/0/0/0/0/0/`/,_ _ _/  ) ; -.    |    _ _\.-~       /   /
                             ,-}        _      *-.|.-~-.           .~    ~
            \     \__/        `/\      /                 ~-. _ .-~      /
             \____(oo)           *.   }            {                   /
             (    (--)          .----~-.\        \-`                 .~
             //__\\  \__ Ack!   ///.----..<        \             _ -~
            //    \\               ///-._ _ _ _ _ _ _{^ - - - - ~

Alan Clinton's Guide For The Un-Initated To Buying Guinness In An Irish Pub lists six essential steps for enjoying a good Guinness.

Unfortunately (as it's past midnight), I haven't got a pint of Guinness at my disposal right now, so I'll have to content myself with a cup of coffee, I guess... At the moment, caffeine is probably better than alcohol anyways, as I'm into some serious hacking this night...

(via del.icio.us)

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