wants to contribute to Free-Software-Movement

[arnuld fraser]

Dear Sirs,
           My name is "Fraser". I am writing this
email because I want to contribute to the development
of GNU/HURD OS. I am a graduate with zero "real-life
programming" experience. Presently I am learning
PYTHON.

Before anything, I want to give a little introduction
of myself:

After my B.Sc. (with comp. appl.) I wanted to do RHCE
(but programming is interesting). In B.Sc. my
lecturers taught me the 'C' language. Being very true
I never understood 'C'. I did try, continuously for 2
years (with C++ too) but kept on failing to understand
(ask how many students understood the concept of
programming in 3 years, only 2 out of 42). So after 2
years, in 2003, I declared that programming is a
complete wastage of life. (During my entire graduation
I never heard of phrases like "FreeSoftwares",
"proprietary software" and "Open-Source"). I (along
with many classmates) kept on believing that computers
run on WINDOWS and nothing else is there to run
computers (Now I think computers run on
Operating-Systems and WINDOWS is one of them) and on
around 250 computers in 2 large buildings of my
college every single computer runs on WINDOWS
(actually, from experience it is a technically-poor
and error-prone OS, worst OS I have ever seen in my
life). 

After graduation I did not get any job so I became a
SALESMAN and started selling. After 2 years In 2005 I
watched a movie 'HACKERS' and was very much impressed
by the individual talents shown in the movie, I left
the position as "Sales Officer" (was working with
Standard Chartered Bank's Personal Loan branch) and
decided to give programming a try. I searched the
entire net and came across a new word "PYTHON" - kind
for people who are not programmers.

One day I was in a bookshop looking for a book on
PYTHON and saw a word "FEDORA LINUX 2" free 4CDs with
the book. I was looking to sell my old Celeron 600 MHz
PC because there was no replacement of WINDOWS (as I
was taught in college). I read through some pages and
came to know that computers run on different OSs not
on WINDOWS. Next, I paid 475/- rupees and bought the
book.

I saw a sentence saying "what you have on 4 CDs is a
battle-tested OS". Of course I was excited and
installed the 4 cds. 1st I played with "vi" for about
2 months and I did not know that a storm is coming
towards me. That happened with my 2nd interaction with
Emacs (after 1st interaction I just abandoned it, as a
typical WINDOWS user will do) I read, "press C-h C-p
to know about GNU project and its goals". "Well GNU,
what's that?" I asked myself. I pressed exactly those
keys and.... for the first time in my life I saw the
word "FreeSoftwares" - free as in freedom not in price
(April 2005). What, I also had python and many more
powerfull tools; after all I found that Emacs is my
favourite text-editor. I opened the gnu.org and read
many articles of RMS. RMS taught me, helped me to
understand that "softwares" do not only mean pressing
keys and making money but you and me and our society
are deeply connected with them.

Now I think programming is not wastage of life, it is
great; coding is a work of a genius. (ask my
lecturers," What's GNU?", they will stare at you with
a  completely blank-look, they have MCA degrees and
they do not know the word "FreeSoftwares"). A piece of
code is a great work of art. My focus is on developing
GNU/HURD OS on L4 microkernel, kernel-hacking to be
exact. GNU Manifesto has given one more person "the
FREEDOM" and I will keep on spreading the "idea of
freedom" till the end of my life..

THE MAIN POINT:

Now can you tell me how a person with
"zero-real-life-programming experience" and presently
learning PYTHON can contribute to the development of
GNU/HURD OS on L4 microkernel. I am just learning but
in the coming months I will develop myself and will
learn PERL, LISP and 'C' too( as told by Eric S.
Raymond in "How to become a Hacker"). Tell me how can
I contribute, if my skills do not match then please
give me an advice on developing the skill and becoming
the core-developer in the team.

Thanks for your patience and precious time, as my mail
went lengthy. I hope to be favoured with an early
reply


Arnuld Fraser




"The Great Intellectuals"



                
____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page 
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs