The person writing, Robert, bought his daughter a computer for her 14th birthday. He got what they could afford, and due to financial constraints that meant not much. Price often isn't the compelling selling feature for business users in the "first" world (gah, I hate that term), but for many others it is. In this case, it made all the difference. The best part is that this family is not getting cheated because they don't happen to have endless amounts of disposable income: they get to participate on their terms without limitation.
So just what difference does free-as-in-freedom software make? Robert speaks eloquently and clearly:
"I cant tell you how much I appreciate
the work you all have done. Its a work of art. If I could thank each and every one of
you I would.
You have given her the world to learn and explore.
So if you get frustrated or tired in
your work for Open Source/Free Software, just remember that somewhere in Missouri
there is a 14 year-old girl named Hope, an A-student who runs on the track team,
who is now your biggest fan and one of the newest users of
Linux/Ubuntu."
Yeah, I'm a little misty eyed now. Maybe you should be too: with what skills we have we're making a difference. It may not solve world hunger in this decade or bring about instant world peace, but together we are undeniably improving things in our own little way by contributing in a positive fashion to the ethical stature and fairness of our societies. There are few other achievements in life as important, valuable or rewarding.
I believe that untangling the various miseries in our world will occur in the form of a long series of small steps taken by many people as part of their daily lives. Who knows what the people of the world will do tomorrow because of what we are doing today.
Indeed, a bright future requires a little bit of Hope. To Robert: thanks for the reminder. Hugs, peace and love.
13 comments:
No offence, but that email looks so fake.
@anonymous: What do you expect? You want the girl to GPG signs her e-mail!?
"but that email looks so fake."
it's unfortunate we live in a time when positive stories of hope (excuse the pun) are immediately suspect.
i understand why it is that way, but sometimes beautiful things do happen. and if we give ourselves half a chance, sometimes we get to experience them first hand.
Either way, fake or not. I guess what Aaron said will apply for others (and is not solely based on the content of this one email). If you doubt the content: just take it as a metaphor.
We read about school children in Brazil didn't we? So make it "+52 Million" :)
Here's another real story for the non believers out there.
Thanks to open source software I have been able to provide for my family for the last four years. I have built a small business doing support for small and medium sized companies and my competitive advantage is the resilience, reliability and greatness of free software.
I am just getting by day to day, month to month, but I hope to live to tell my 18-month old baby that there is indeed hope and kindness and reciprocity and selflessness in the world and that I got to live that by, among other things, being part of a thriving community of FLOSS/KDE/Linux users.
Thank YOU EVERYONE.
Nice :-)
Really.
I don't think it's fake. Even I get emails saying "thank you" from time to time (not too often) from users. Yes, this really exists. And this one is an especially nice one. I agree completely with Aaron here: while not immediate world peace, we give people the tools to store and communicate their knowledge freely.
Alex
Just when I think Stallman-like hippies in open source software are all dead and gone, I read "Hugs, peace and love."
You're the best kind of throwback, Aaron. Keep on rockin' in the free world!
Didn't someone tell you once that what you do is Poetry?
Ah, poetry...
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
@anon
Dear aaron,
unfortunately im not a 16 year old girl, nor am i eloquent but what i do i have to say is thanks for the work. Since switching to kubuntu i know feel that my computer and everything about it is mine. So Id like to personally thank you for empowering the developers to empower me!
p.s this note is even signed with kpgp :P
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQFIKSpzoCB+wpb4g6ERAgDDAJ9GUqR4Pw14ludzHbKH3OZ880il2wCeKyXD
WYytpT1IjE2HSq1EVepJdt8=
=p0Yo
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
Hi Aaron,
Read this on the 'net today, about some new desktop called 'grape':
http://www.osnews.com/story/19740/Grape:_a_New_Desktop
Reminded me about KDE4 / Plasma a lot... I suppose doing such stuff will be/is easy with Plasma?
That's really quite lovely. One of the loveliest things I've read for a while, and it's great that with the software we have we can have something fantastic installed right from the off that people can explore with. It's a mark of how computing has become progressively more unaffordable (more than you might think) for an awful lot of people over the years.
This is one of the most heart warming stories I've read for sometime. I hope I'll be able to make some contributions back to KDE some day.
Very nice work; congradulations to everyone that makes KDE possible.
Nitpicking: the "first" world is what is also knows as "the old world", i.e. - Europe. The "second world" (a term even less used then "first world") is "the new world" - the Americas. "3rd world" follows in a natural progression.
So in the above case, if you want to talk about price conscious computing in non-3rd world countries, and specifically in the US, you'd want to refer to "new world" or "second world" or simply "western culture".
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