Looking back over this series, it went longer than I expected. I hope it was occasionally interesting to more than a few readers, and thanks to the few who wrote comments in email.

Also, it seems I left out a ton of free software, because well ... (Debian!) Just listing code that I own in some way or another rather misses the big point of free software. Just listing all the other projects I've contributed to, in small or large ways, would miss the point too.

The big suprise at the ten year vantage point is that the most important thing was something I entirely left out of all 21^W22 previous posts. I can't remember the name of the little text mode game that was the first piece of free software I contributed to (by writing a man page), but I do remember the buzz of getting happy mail back from its author and getting sucked in to write a few levels or something, maybe fix a couple of bugs. Scale that up, multiply the connections a thousandfold and you have my ten years of free software.

So the best part of free software for me is sitting in the hotel lobby in Atlanta at 1 AM and talking about maybe adding build deps to Debian with Manoj and other oldtimers. It's organising a table for 30 at the last minute because suddenly those dinner plans mushroomed, and passing a paper around to get a list of names, and looking at that list 5 years later and smiling. It's getting the $5 tour of Silly Valley with Bruce. It's RMS dancing in the rain (no, really). It's a proper Debian Finnish sauna. It's learning to use chopsticks with Ben. It's sleeping on the floor in Europe three dozen times in a year. It's canoeing in Canada with Stockholm. It's relaxing at Michelle's with folks for weeks before the conference. It's meeting so many amazing people for the first time, whom I've actually known well for years before.