yahuxo’s blog

Hello, my name is Tobias Rapp and I’m fellow #951.

I live in a small village near Stuttgart, Germany together with my wife Tabea. We both are active members of our local church and it’s youth group  "Jugendkreis Oppelsbohm". We like to watch movies, read books and to invite people to our house.

I started to use "Linux" when buying my first computer in 1997 mostly because it was so cheap and I didn’t have the money for a commercial OS. It didn’t take long to find out the freedom philosophy behind the software and that there is a "GNU" in front of the word "Linux". I learned programming by adapting some small programs to my needs (e.g. I’m a fan of the LIRC project) and finally started to study "technical software engineering" (thus I can read C code and the color code on resistors). Currently I’m working for NOA Audio Solutions which provides software and hardware for professional audio archiving.

Finally I became a member of FSF Europe these weeks. I did this for several reasons:

• to get a nice OpenPGP card to protect my privacy
• to have a voice that speaks against software patents in the EU (I know Georg Greve is quite busy around that), something that threatens my personal job
• to support free software in general which is part of my christian responsibility for people that do not have the money to buy proprietary software

I see free software as something that frees people from restrictive software licenses and instead treats each person as someone who is able to participate.