Struggle for freedom

Last days I was thinking about the question which people tend to ask me all the time over the years. Why? Why you are doing it? To be able to decode the answer you need to know how I came to that point, where it turn around and I couldn't think about anything else.

I'm young, and was really young when came to the technology age, starting to use computers. Did not know what was the internet, or Microsoft, or Linux, or anything else. I was using 8bit computers with BASIC as computer language, you were literaly typing everything you wanted computer to do. So it became natural that by the age of 9 I was coding stuff that I need for the use of the computer. It was really hard in eastern Europe to get any software except for computer games. At certain point there I found other people, class mates, geeks, having computers and we started to share and collaborate with the code and games. It sounds a way professional, it wasn't, we were mostly intersted in playing games and playing with the computer. My parents were mad that I spent a lot of time in front of it, and pushing already the limit when you are awake and siting behind computer. It turn down in fifth grade with a PC and people started calling me a computer geek, even the phrasing didn't exist around here, the meaning did.

I always had friends who were older than me, with PC, I explored DOS and Norton Commander, even saw Windows 3.11. But it wasn't much, I didn't see what it is good for and I didn't needed it at all. In 6th grade one older friend showed me some different piece of software, which actually looked more like DOS than windows 3.11, what I really started to like. It was Linux, but still I didn't understand what it is and what it means. Without the possibility of internet you aren't really able to learn computer stuff so easily when you suppose to be learning in basic school and just spent the freetime after school to have fun. My fun was more in the cyberspace than I had in the real world, but it wasn't only the computer games which turned me over. It was the possibilities to control, create and share, to be able and know something. Linux had this huge advantage over any other operating system you might be using, or I was using. The advatange was the community that exists somewhere out there, even if I have no idea that it is. This community was willing and really wanted you to be able to know and understand their software. It was the electronic books, manuals and these kinds. My world started to turn over, I was using dos and maybe windows later on for playing games, but I was using Linux to understand how computers work and of course getting skilled in the unix console.

At the same time I started to explore the Linux world, I somehow crossed over the internet which again changed my life completly as computers did 5 years ago. First things were Netscape, IRC, yahoo, altavista and linux again. I became literally addicted to computers and the internet, I spend a lot of time trying to get myself online, at my friends work place, because there were no internet cafes at that time and I had no money at all. These few years started to change me, where the pursuit for information, pursuit for connection was absolutely top first and second after anything I was desiring. Out of the suden there were two intenet cafes and I found myself escaping school to be online. I got sucked completely.

Beginning of social networks, online friends, MMORPGs was there, and I took it, every one sip there were. Starting to play MUDs which I enjoy even now. The third thing that computers did to me and did indeed change me was turning into a blackhat. It started to simple, when I somehow puted Linux distrubution into a internet cafe computer, being the only one able to run it and hide it from others, it stayed there for around 1 and half year on the same computer I had reserved for me. I started to realize that my knowledge of Linux was pretty good for a guy still visiting basic school. That was the time when I hacked first time into computer via UUCP protocal (Unix to Unix CoPy). It was easy, but it wasn't easy to have that knowledge and the skill. Hacking at the beginning turned out to be first to know, then to be able to hide yourself, and do it more and more. I didn't know everything, for sure I was lame in lot of stuff, but still there was something I was able to do.

During the next period which changed me was connected to Berkeley, and FreeBSD. I was fifteen when I actually started to realize copyright and licencing. This run over made me to create more with computers as a system engineer than to control them by force, and I was able to score some money for it. Win Win situation and I knew, I will be hacking until I die.

It was still long to realizing and accepting the truth of how important is to defend the networks, technologies, standards, patents and god only knows what else is coming.

moving mirrors, leaving shades behind

Sometimes your life is heading so fast that you have no idea where exactly is going. This was a bit my case last year, maybe a lot more than I realize or want to think of. Now it's gone, lightly breeze which you remember from the beginning of last year autumn.

The struggle which we bear and fight is actually easier when you find allies and friends on your side, believing in the right things, helping you and each other to make it a better place. It's easier to donate time and actions for some nasty deep impact. Now I know that my purpose isn't really only to change something, even if I try so hard, and I manage over the years to make some impact. Now I know that the not less important purpose is to rock the boat. To make people think what is happening around, to show them the reality, to show them how tax payers money are getting spent to enslave people into proprietary technology. Life of course isn't about the technology, but in western world it is a way too much to ignore the facts of being us blinded and enslaved.

For me the fight was almost always about technology, for information and access when I was a black hat teenager, believing into something more than what I was said to believe. These foundations was in a way correct and I stepped into the vortex of principles.

The present seems a way different, policy and negotiations, traveling. Over the past month I decided to move my base of operations out of Bratislava. Seems to be far, but in half a year or less I'm relocating myself to Brussels. I still need to come back to Bratislava each month, because of the contracts, meetings, committees, non profits, small companies, whatever else is there. Thing is, I can work on my stuff in Brussels for three weeks each month without flying all over the place. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.

I just after long time realized how to organize myself, not better, not properly, just organize. This is I believe how it should go.