Free software

My first contact with Linux dates back to the late nineties when this was the only affordable way to do Internet connection sharing. Open source also matched well a broad curiousity about how things actually work. So in terms of computers, operating systems, or later Internet I never was a plain user, there was always also the desire to look under the hood.

More reasons came later:

Dealing with bugs: Somehow I manage to trigger bugs in software pretty easily. With open source and the appropriate knowledge I usually can identify the actual cause within a short time and create patches.

Learning from other people's work: Writing computer programs is an area where you'll never stop learning. Open source allows me to understand how other people have solved problems.

No hazzle about licensing: Open source spares me a lot of hazzle: I am not bound to "no more than ten concurrent users" limits, not affected by an "license server is down". I can link or otherwise use other code without having to deal with royalties.

Privacy: Overall, I have much more control about what the programs on my computer actually do. I don't have to blindly trust closed source vendors whether their software does things behind my back.

Debian

My first Debian installation was in the year 2000, first bug reports date to somewhen in 2004. That was also about the time when I started creating my first Debian packages, mostly to distribute some private programs in a reasonable way.

Plans

Keep things running. Make things better. Find bugs. Fix bugs. Look for some nice niches to do work.