A Fresh Cup

I recently stumbled over an interesting new blog by Mike Gunderloy, the
author of the Larkware blog. His new blog is titled A Fresh Cup,
and it chronicles Mike’s journey to rid himself of Microsoft
software in his personal and professional life. Considering that
Larkware is one of the most popular blogs for Microsoft developer news,
that is no mean feat. To get a good idea of where he currently is and
where he is going, try reading this post.

I identify with what Mike is writing about, because I have been struggling
with the same sort of thoughts for many years. I have been working with
Microsoft technology professionally since 1999 when I was working for a
(now defunct) e-commerce startup. I started with classic
ASP and SQL Server 7.
Since then I have picked up skills in Visual Basic, .NET, C#,
BizTalk and Dynamics AX. The funny thing is, I have not used any
Microsoft software on my personal computer since 1995. Early in 1995, I
switched to using OS/2 as the primary operating system on my personal
computer. In 1998, when it had become painfully clear that IBM wasn’t
going to support OS/2 anymore I switched to Linux. Since then my
distribution of choice has changed, (currently it is Fedora Core)
but I have been a user of Linux and open source software.
Unfortunately, I have not been able to translate my love of open source
into a viable living. (Living in an eddy on the river of technology like
Ohio does not help either.)

For now, I am content to bide my time and continue on as a Microsoft
developer by day, and an open source developer by night. I am not giving
up on the dream just yet. Some day I will find a way to make my living
with open source software. That is my goal.