Paw Prints: Writings of the maddog

Recently a couple of very nice things happened to me.

I needed a favor, and a friend of mine reached out to help me.

They were person who I have known for about ten years, and although they have always been nice to me, this last "help" was just when it was needed most.

As I thanked him, he reminded me that I was instrumental in getting him into Free Software, and that this had made a huge, positive difference in his life.

He reminded me that I had invited him to join me at dinner with the CEO of a company where he soon found employment.

He reminded me that I had taken him to visit my two goddaughters, and as we sat on the floor playing with them, their father, Linus Torvalds, came into the room and talked with us a bit. Afterwards we left the house and he said that I was "never to do that to him again". "Do what?", I asked, "I told you I was going to see my god-daughters...."

I had "forgotten" about these times, but of course I remembered them when he told me. I am glad when I can influence someone's life in a positive way.

When I met Mark Spencer, the creator of the Asterisk project, he told me that a talk I gave at a conference in 1999 convinced him to make the project Free and Open Source. It is revelations like this that keep me going.

Last week I met a man at a conference. He told me that he had listened to me at a convention one time, and he started to move his company to work only with Free Software. Now he had completed that task, and he found that he could do more with his software because he could modify it to meet his needs. He was not a programmer, but he could hire people who were, and since he had the source code for his software, he could have them change it.

I asked the gentleman if he had ever written an article for a magazine about his use of Free Software in his business. He looked surprised and asked me if anyone would really want to read it? I answered that there would be lots of people interested in such an article. Perhaps they were people whose business was a bit different from his, but they would find inspiration from his success.

He promised me that he would write such an article.

And so it goes...we influence people in big ways, and often we do not realize it. You may think that what you say about Free Software has little impact, but you may affect someone....

Carpe Diem!

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