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.
Besides working on my individual projects, I also designed and founded
http://www.catb.org/esr/loadsharers/ - The Loadsharers network, aimed at funding other load-bearing Internet people. If you have a job that depends on Internet infrastructure, please take the Loadsharer pledge.
github.com
f-droid.org
archive.li
web.archive.org
archive.fo
