Why Free Software, and why hacking even when quite ill?
This article by an anonymous person tells you why -- near the bottom: And now a word from our corporate sponsors
Let the stuffed shirts and corporate bigwigs make money from the Free code. Let the pundits question what it will take for Linux to succeed on the Desktop. There is massive innovation in Linux userspace, driven by the same geeky joy that, in another era and in other fields is called "intellectual curiosity." That's what I see as the main force behind the Open Source movement; not corporate possibilities, as the LinuxWorld convention pretends, but brutal candor, mischievous smartness, self-mocking over-eagerness. The corporate successes of Linux are just the results of an overflow of energy, the excesses being mopped up. The hacker ethic is driving the corporations. We don't need them, but they need us.
Intellectual curiosity it is -- that, and the intense desire to make things, to, in fact, create. Before I kept a blog, I already found it necessary to write about that -- Apologia, because people kept mailing me, asking why the thingy I found it necessary to spend time on creative pursuits, like conlanging or world building.
And now I'm not only working on a novel, on a language database application, on a KDE paint application, but also studying theology and messing with real paint again.
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