From piracy to open-source: my story
Tags: opensource, computerscience, motivation
Published: 2019-12-09 17:11:40

###### _Upfront note: this is my first personal post on Dev.to. Any constructive criticism is more than welcome._

I grew up with a computer from the age of 6. Even if I was born in a modest family, my dad understood the potential of technology and wanted to make sure I have everything I need growing up. However, most other things available for a computer were a bit more than my parents could afford. So, what's a PC good for, for a kid, if you can't play all the games and watch all the animes you want?

That's how I got into piracy, even before I was 8. By the time I was 12 I already had a huge collection of pirated stuff, most of them nicely labeled with color printed covers and customized support. The entire neighborhood was reaching out whenever something new was released. (_Note: I never looked for profit or ask for money_)

When I turned 14, World of Warcraft was released. A subscription-paid game? What the hell was wrong with Blizzard? _I can't afford that, I can't crack that... What am I supposed to do?_
And that's how I got into modding, custom servers and other random stuff. I ended up spending time reading and trying out scripts rather than asking my parents to pay a monthly subscription.

Long story short, by the time I was accepted at the university I was already deeply rooted into "_crack it or script it_" kind of unwritten rule. But soon all was about to change....

In my freshman year I befriended another student that assumed most of the organizational responsibilities, but never went to parties other _fun_ stuff young students are into. He grew up in a family where piracy was a concept they just couldn't understand. "_If you need something others worked for, buy it or trade other services for it_", he used to say.

I guess you can only imagine his surprise the first time he visited my place and realized nothing was "legit", not even my Windows license.

It took him about a year to open my eyes. He changed the way I was thinking about software completely. In less than a year I dumped everything I had installed or used that didn't have a valid license. I donated my entire collection of pirated stuff to an old friend (yeah, I know... I should have thrown it away...), I started volunteering to a local association that had ties to Microsoft to get my first Windows license (all volunteers got one). I gave up Office suite and learned to write all my school stuff in LaTeX. I stopped playing games that weren't free to play and adopted a _"if the software doesn't have a freeware alternative and I can't afford it, then I probably don't need it either"_ attitude.

In the upcoming years I went one step further. After 1 month at my first job I re-negotiated my contract to include an IntelliJ IDEA license for home, since the company wasn't using eclipse anymore and I insisted I keep my personal development environment in sync with my work environment. I even launched a start-up as part of a plan to get myself more involved with something tech related during my free time. And many companies offer huge discounts (even free licenses) in the first 1-2 years of a start-up.
Moreover, I even dedicated 2 years of my time to work as a volunteer in the gaming community and try, one way or another, to give back for all the games I pirated as a kid. Heart and soul, I dedicated my entire attention to do as much as I could during that time.
I like to believe that some of the things I touched got better over time and that I got to change at least a couple of small things for the better.

_What does this entire wall of text have to do with anything?_, you might ask yourself if you had enough patience to read through. Well, the answer is quite simple: I'd like to get involved with open-source.

While I haven't contributed to Github yet, I realized that lately most of the tools I use are open-source. There are things I think are "cool", but haven't found on Github. _"Why don't I start on a project?"_ was one of my thoughts a couple of days ago. But then fear and other negative feelings kicked in. _"I am not as good as a developer as all other people there"_, _"I wouldn't know where to start"_, etc. While I haven't yet figured out if these are just excuses or legit concerns, I decided that the best approach would be to open up here and take it one step at a time.

My next post will be, probably, about getting started with open source. Or why I don't do it.

P.S. Next time I'll include images and gifs, to make the wall of text easier to parse :)