A Man and his Penguin

I saw this posted on FS Daily:

This post is for all of you out therewho have developed or contributed to Linux/Ubuntu projects and all of the opensource coders who read this.I do not know where to send a post like this so I hope this one email will find its way in the sea of posts out there.

I thank you to the point of tears. 

Earlier this week I installed Kubuntuon a refurbished AMD computer I purchased for $184 from a discountonline vendor, it came with no OS. It now runs like a champ. 

We cant afford much and this was my 14year old daughter's birthday present this past week. She isoverjoyed. And she is already trying to tackle Adept Manager andexploring Linux; adding bling and her music, of course. 

I cant tell you how much I appreciatethe work you all have done. Its a work of art. If I could thank each and every one ofyou I would. 

You have given her the world to learn and explore. 

So if you get frustrated or tired inyour work for Open Source/Free Software, just remember that somewhere in Missourithere is a 14 year-old girl named Hope, an A-student who runs on the track team,who is now your biggest fan and one of the newest users ofLinux/Ubuntu. 

Thanks most sincerely,

R.B.A.Missouri

I was touched by R.B.A’s message. So I decided to write back:

Dear Robert,

I’m sure you’ve received a lot of e-mails thanking you for your letter of gratitude, but I’d like to add my own.

I develop a program for transcoding video to use on the Sony Walkman MP3 players; not a lot of people use it because those MP3 players aren’t terribly popular. As such I’ve let the program’s development stagnate a little.

I do also send bug reports to open-source software projects to do my bit towards making other Linux software better. Knowing that there are people out there who are truly appreciative of what us Linux-based developers do, makes it all worthwhile.

Your message gave me the impeteus to fix the two bugs in my program that have just been reported to me. I’m so glad you and your daughter are getting so much out of Free Software, and I wish you both the best of luck for the future.

Chris
Developer of Blacklight Walkman Manager

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 4:58 am and is filed under Advocacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.