Friday, April 1, 2011

Hard Rock and Free Software: part one

Some days ago I was reading again a book about Terminal command line and at some point I felt like listening to music and especially some good old 80's Rock so I picked one of my favorite play-lists and BANG, Skid Row Poetry right in to my face...

Since I was born they couldn't hold me down
Another misfit kid, another burned-out town

Never played by the rules I never really cared
My nasty reputation takes me everywhere

I look and see it's not only me
So many others have stood where I stand
We are the young so raise your hands

They call us problem child
We spend our lives on trial
We walk an endless mile
We are the youth gone wild
We stand and we won't fall
We're the one and one for all
The writing's on the wall
We are the youth gone wild

So listening to those lyrics of 'Youth Gone Wild'  I started thinking what are the similarities when I was starting my life as a Rocker and my life as a Free Software supporter. I found many similarities that I hadn't noticed until that day. I was shocked to be honest, so I thought why not blog about it? And here we are, as always continue reading at your own risk ;-)


1) Family affairs 

Well when I was a young boy and started to listen to rock my father wanted to send me to an exorcist because he thought I was possessed, to be honest I felt possessed my self with all that energy that music had that I never experienced before.

When I grew up (?!?) and discovered Free Software, my father though I was possessed for a second time in my life since he suddenly saw me standing in front of a screen reading for hours, standing still, I also felt a bit strange since the power of knowledge of that new stuff filled me with energy once again.

2)Surrounding Community

Back then, when I started listening to Rock and I went to my friends with a tape filled with Aerosmith, Twisted Sister, Deep purple and Scorpions they thought I was becoming something else that they don't like so we split and I was alone until I found some other Rockers and started crush in to places where we spent all of our time listening to Rock, some of us tried to learn to play guitar and drums. We were part of a community.

When I started using Free Software and I tried to talk to my friends about it and shared them some live Cd's I had made for them, they said that I was loosing my mind, so I was alone until I found others like me and a LUG where we crushed all of our free time and running various Linux distro's, some of us tried to learn Python, Java and Pearl. We were part of a community.

3)Freedom of doing whatever you want, freedom to fail.

As Rockers we started playing guitars and drums and we didn't have to be good, we didn't wanted to be professionals, we just cared to play. We organized gigs and we were drinking beers. Many times we were having gigs with just our friends, some times even without them, we are talking about epic fails but we didn't actually care because we did what we wanted just because we liked the whole situation, we didn't want to make money out of it, we did it for ourselves and that is why we had great fun with it.( Although we all dreamed at least once to become RockStars)

As Free Software users we started writing code(not me :-p ) testing various distributions and also building custom distributions based on other distributions or playing with various GUI's, we don't care if what we are making actually works most of the times and we enjoy failing, since we liked the road better than the actual destination. We tried to convince people test what we do. Sometimes some of our friends did that,sometimes not even our friends accepted to try it. We didn't actually get bothered by it(at least for a long time). We didn't care about making money out of it, we had our jobs. We did it(and still do it) for ourselves and that is why we have great fun with it.(Although we all dreamed ourselves at least once as the next Linus Torvalds).

That's it for now. Part one ends here.

Do what you Love
Love what you do
and
Love thy guitar as you Love thy desktop
Because those will guide you to the path of ...

Kostas Koudaras

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