I’ve been a supporter of the open source community for a long time. I prefer legally having a copy of something and at the same time not needing to pay for it. As an individual with limited means, it really makes life easier than having to fork over a wad of cash every time a major company releases a sizeable update to their software.

Recently, I’ve come to love the people who dedicate their time and code for free use even more. As I mentioned the other day, I’m working on a project which I’m still not yet ready to reveal. This project requires a lot of programming functions which I could spend weeks painstakingly researching and writing and debugging. But I don’t need to because someone else was willing to do the work and post their code for free use (though they usually ask for credit and this is something I’m more than willing to supply). My favorite coders are the ones who’ll put up a function or chunk of code and then detail exactly what each part does. It helps me understand what it’s doing and it helps me modify it for my own purposes. In advance, thank you to everyone who’s code I’m borrowing.

A few minor details about the project before I go. This is something I began working on a year ago for my own use after seeing a similar pay version of it on the web and wanting it for my own. Since it wasn’t open source I didn’t pay for it. While I’ve dabbled with the project here and there since the original spark in my mind, I’ve really come into it full force since stumbling across a few more pay versions of it. My thought is to use the freely available code that I talked about earlier to put up a freely available project for those who don’t want to pay for the service. Consider it my way of giving back to a community who has given me so much already and hopefully spreading the reach of open source to new backers.

That’s all I’ll say for now but know that its coming along far quicker than I expected and I think this has to do with me focusing on the functionality before I even consider the design. We’ll see how long this practice lasts.