Eric S. Raymond is creating
The computer code that makes your digital world work
I build things you use every day
204
$1,052.50
Milestone Goals
2 Milestone Goals
reached
Mortage plus health insurance
My wife tells me our mortgage payments are $789 per month. It's pretty difficult to concentrate on fixing the Internet from a homeless shelter, and I hear they have terrible connectivity. So the next milestone is to make sure I can not only pay for health insurance but keep a roof over our heads. My wife and the cat will thank you for contributing. If we make this one, maybe I'll even *gasp* post a cat video.
About
I'm a computer hacker. I helped found the open-source and open-culture movements. I write code you rely on every day.
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Every time you use a Web browser, locate yourself on Google Maps, draw money from an ATM, or play on a game console, you rely on computer code I wrote and gave away.
The Internet was built by people like me. We're still out there, patiently building things and fixing bugs and putting in our time to make sure your world keeps working. We're mostly volunteers, because there is no way to wrap a business model around the most essential services. We do what we do for love, and because software is our art - and because, in the Internet-dependent 21st century, we know civilization would be lost without us just as surely as if the roads and sewers and power grid stopped working.
It's hard to notice us, because we're not the people who write the programs you can easily see. Ours is the software behind the software - the programs and service libraries that paint pixels on your display, move bits along the wires, allow hardware to talk to other hardware. (For those of you more technically inclined, I'm talking about systems code rather than applications.)
Though I'm a techie, I'm in a situation similar to a fine artist because the market has not figured out how to value and reward the work I feel called to do. Unlike most artists, it wouldn't be difficult for me to get a well-paid job - but then I'd have to work on what an employer wants, rather than what the world actually needs.
Pledge to me so I can keep delivering what the world actually needs.
The Internet was built by people like me. We're still out there, patiently building things and fixing bugs and putting in our time to make sure your world keeps working. We're mostly volunteers, because there is no way to wrap a business model around the most essential services. We do what we do for love, and because software is our art - and because, in the Internet-dependent 21st century, we know civilization would be lost without us just as surely as if the roads and sewers and power grid stopped working.
It's hard to notice us, because we're not the people who write the programs you can easily see. Ours is the software behind the software - the programs and service libraries that paint pixels on your display, move bits along the wires, allow hardware to talk to other hardware. (For those of you more technically inclined, I'm talking about systems code rather than applications.)
Though I'm a techie, I'm in a situation similar to a fine artist because the market has not figured out how to value and reward the work I feel called to do. Unlike most artists, it wouldn't be difficult for me to get a well-paid job - but then I'd have to work on what an employer wants, rather than what the world actually needs.
Pledge to me so I can keep delivering what the world actually needs.