[gfsd]I would like to volunteer

I once heard Richard Stallman speak at a lecture at Clemson University quite a few years, and then some, ago and ever since then I have wanted to get in touch with you all (yes I live in the southern US y'all) but something has been holding me back. Lately, I've been searching for employment again, but some of my experiences with that have only served to make me feel more strongly that the GNU project is really a beautiful idea and essential to building the future of the software industry in a way that is more concerned with the social good than a fat profit margin, and it makes me exasperated that the system of distribution and/or licensing of commercially available software only serves to further widen the class stratifications that exist in our society. I don't have the funds to purchase the software that employers want to see listed on my resume, and in many cases only large for profit organizations really have the capital to purchase such packages. Rather that turn that exasperation into depression again, I would like to use that energy to fuel my drive to keep on coding, with a mission, with out a paycheck from any organization that I have ethical issues working for in the first place.

I would like to take this opportunity, especially while I am still unemployed, to jump right in and get started... I have had the Labanotation editor in mind for quite some time, and today I noticed the request for a PageMaker clone which might be right up my alley (who knows, maybe Paul Brainerd would be willing to give me some advice on that one). However, I was thinking that a good task for me to start with, might be the "directory of known free software." I'm a global thinker and having a better overview of what I'm starting to get myself into, the state of the application landscape - so to speak - of the GNU project would be a good way to get myself in the groove for that. Primarily, my development experience, except for some small academic class assignments, has been done for the MS Windows platform, so I will have a bit of a learning curve to go through in OS differences and X programming, however I am quite familiar with Unix from a user and sysadmin point of view, and I welcome the opportunity to learn and work, if you will have me. If you would like for me to tackle the directory project, please let me know more details about what kind of a directory you are envisioning and the types of issues that each package should be evaluated for.

From:	Michael Tench
Subject:	[gfsd]I would like to volunteer
Date:	Thu, 12 Jul 2001 08:39:23 -0400