I am a huge fan of FLOSS: free/libre open-source software. My website runs on CentOS Linux, one of my home machines runs Kubuntu (you Gnome users are lost), I use emacs (down you vi fiends!), Anti-Vir, Crimson Editor, Firefox, Apache, PHP, BitTorrent, Python, WordPress, and so many more I can’t count them all.

I have often thought about how/whether I can contribute to these projects. The ones I use are all worthy of support, and I suspect many more would be if they got some momentum behind them. And I don’t have the time, skill, desire, or energy to try to pitch-in on bug fixes, feature adds, porting, or any of the other thousand and one things these projects ask for.

I contribute by linking back to those projects. I tell my friends and family about them, and try to get them to use them and spread the love, so to speak. On a few projects I have contributed to their donations page. And I contribute to those projects by releasing libraries of my own.

Code I’ve written, mostly in the forms of low-level data structures and little utility functions, may not be very sexy, or even ever get used, but I put it out there for folks to grab.

I love the determination and drive shown by those pushing forward on FLOSS projects, and I wish I could contribute more. Maybe some day I’ll be able to, but for now, thanks for your efforts.