In a way, I could say every book I've ever read has changed at least some of my views on some things. It would be a pretty piss-poor book that didn't make me question at least some of my ideas, even if the changes it brings about are minor.
But I will focus on one that changed my views fundamentally about something I thought they were already good on – and has been a guiding principle in my career and life ever since. In a break with tradition – I actually met the author of this book before I ever read any of his works. Back in 2001 I was a champion of the open-source idea. I spoke about the technical power that can be unleashed by sharing work and sharing eyeballs. I spoke about the security benefits – and even the fun of being able to customize. I avoided closed source stuff but I didn't actually think they were wrong – just… lesser.
Then I went to the first Idlelo conference to deliver a paper on a distributed educational content deliver network I had been developing. At the time it was groundbreaking stuff which is why I got invited. The keynote speaker was Richard Mathew Stallman. A man I had long held in awe for his programing skill, for founding the GNU project, for writing the GPL – but felt had lacked the bit of pragmatism that "linux" would need to become mainstream.
Sitting through his talk though, the passion with which he spoke resonated with me. I found myself agreeing with him, and coming to the same conclusion he did: that free software isn't a nice-to-have it's a right, perhaps more practically speaking it's an obligation of programmers to provide it. I was sold. I also laughed out loud and caught every joke in the Saint Ignutius comedy routine and frankly I think those rare few young "geeks" who freaked out about it a year ago are simply proving that they are utterly out of touch with the culture that created the very movement and software they claim to be passionate about. With it's playful, anti-authoritarian nature – and that this nature is more crucial to it's very existence than all the programming skill in the world.
If you can't take and make a joke – you don't belong in free software development, we can get better code out of a worse programmer who has a sense of humor.
Of course a lot of people wanted his time so my initial opportunities to engage with him one-on-one was limited, Then I learned that he has a deep love of mountains, and offered to take him on a drive around the mountains of the Western Cape winelands. We spent the trip having deep and intense discussions, mostly I was listening like a student at the feet of a master but sometimes I disagreed and he could debate quite graciously (granted none of the disagreements were about software freedom issues about which I believe he is rather unyielding) .
By the end of our trip and talk, he gave me a signed copy of a book containing his collective essays. I treasure that book. I reread it every now and then. I know every argument by heart and I have spent the past decade living by them. I am in occasional e-mail contact with him. While I was leading kongoni development whenever we had to make a judgement call about a piece of software I would mail him for his input and take it as a major voice. It was by his encouragement that Kongoni included software to play DRM'd media – software that is illegal to distribute in the USA or violates patents. My country doesn't have patents and his advice was clear: do not give the bad guys more power than they have, you still have freedom from patents, you don't have a DMCA - let the tools people need to not be ruled by it be in your system.
A champion of open source became an unyielding advocate for free software and I can say with pride that kongoni was a fully free distribution under my leadership – and recognized as such by the FSF. That when I handed leadership over to another I did it on condition of his promise that he would maintain that status (of course – he is not under any legal obligation to – all I have is his word, but he's kept it so far). I had a look at the most recent release the other day -it's quite sweet, he's really done good work using what I built and building on top of that.
Believe it or not, I'm more proud of what was built out of my creation than of the creation itself. That I could write the first versions of those code is a matter of pride, that somebody else could write something better because he could start where I left off – is a matter of greater pride. Newton spoke of standing on the shoulders of giants. The giant whose shoulder's I stand on is Richard Stallman, and the values I adopted from him – has allowed me to be a giant on whose shoulders somebody else could stand.
It really is a great book, by a great man.
