Amarok Blog

The Amarok Team is very happy to announce a new edition of our Amarok Insider newsletter. This time, we have really packed it with information, cool insider details, and fun!

Image copyright by Ben Golub

This edition also features an exclusive interview with Amarok core developer Bart Cerneels, who is starting to resemble Bono from U2 more and more:

Bono Cerneels from Amarok

Please enjoy:

Amarok Insider - Issue 16

I am not quite sure yet what my exact intention with this blog is, it came from a sudden inspiration, like most of my articles. I think, this thought has been breeding in me for a long time: Pointing out that contributing to Free Software projects can actually give you back a lot, without getting directly paid for it.

Let me illustrate this phenomenon with Amarok as a case-study, because I naturally know this project well, and I was able to watch it evolve over the past 8 years. An amazing process, interesting, and certainly life-changing for me. But not for me alone. Over the time, our project has served as a real "Career Maker" for many of our contributors. Also, which might be just as important, it has lead to many good friendships (even personal friendships) between members of our team. In this article, I will not so much go into the friendship aspect, because this is a rather private thing. Let me just say, I consider many members, and also former members of the Amarok team, as close friends. Some friendships have lasted for many years, and they are still going strong. Simply a great thing.

Switching to the career aspect, many of our contributors have started with Amarok when they were still quite young. Many of them have been students back then, or even pupils. Myself, when the idea of creating Amarok formed in my mind, I was in a rather desperate state. Being a student, I had next to no money. I did not have many friends. I had almost lost my interest in computing, which had been an obsession when I was a teenager (I started programming on the Commodore Amiga, at age 15, those were the times!). Nowadays, I am sometimes being treated very respectfully when visiting Free Software events. I have found many friends in KDE and Amarok, from all over the world, I have met a wonderful girlfriend, and I have had interesting jobs that I could never have dreamed of back then. And so much more.

Going back to our team, what has Amarok meant for them, after all these years? Let me just list a few of the achievements, which I think have at least partly been enabled by contributing to our project:

Max Howell: One of the first contributors to Amarok. Back when Max started, he had just earned his master degree in Chemistry. He was not really sure what to do with it yet. Then, one day, a guy named "mxcl" showed up in our IRC channel. I learned that he was from the UK, that he was friendly, and eager to hack on Amarok. So he did that, very successfully. After a while, Max realized that his real passion was in IT, not Chemistry. But he he did not have any formal education or degree in IT. He took the risky step to apply at Last.fm, and was accepted. A few years later, Max had become Lead Developer at Last.fm, famously developing the Last.fm player. Nowadays, Max is a highly competent and successful Software Engineer, works for TweetDeck, and still occasionally contributes to Open Source. Impressive career, I would think.

Christian Muehlhaeuser: Christian (Muesli) showed up around the time that Max had joined Amarok. Together, we are still listed in the English Wikipedia article for Amarok, as "The 3 M's of Amarok". After contributing to Amarok for many years, he took his chances, and applied at Last.fm. He became one of their first employees. When he left Last.fm, Christian was a sought-after Software Engineer. Today many companies are trying to hire him. He has the freedom to choose to do what he likes best. Very impressive.

Seb Ruiz: Seb comes from Down Under, and he was among the "second generation" of Amarok hackers. He contributed massive parts of Amarok 1.x and Amarok 2.x, as well as a unique sense for community spirit, and joy. Today, Seb is Team Leader at Atlassian, a renowned software company based in Australia. It's a great job, from what I heard. He seems to enjoy it a lot.

Ian Monroe: Ian also is from the "second wave" of Amarok developers. Back when he started, he was very young, just beginning his university studies for a degree in CS. When he left university, Ian worked at companies like Collabora. Today, Ian remains an active Amarok contributor, and an active member of the KDE community. His recent work on the KDE Git migration has been very appreciated. It's pretty clear to me that Ian has a great career in front of him, he is still fairly young.

Leo Franchi: Leo joined when he was still very young, just starting his studies in CS and Philosophy. He became one of our most active contributors, and remains with Amarok until today. Leo is now working at KDAB, a company with very good reputation, which has close ties to the KDE community. It's easy to see that Leo will have a very promising career ahead of him.

Lydia Pintscher: Lydia (Nightrose) joined Amarok when she was still new to Free Software, just having started studying for a degree in CS. Lydia quickly became our Community Manager, and a very active person in the KDE community. At this time, Lydia is finishing her master thesis in CS, which is about Amarok and another FOSS project. Heaving read a preview of her thesis, it is clear to me that it will be very successful. It's not hard to see that Lydia will have very good job options, especially with her long experience managing Free Software communities.

This is just a very small part of the many many contributors that Amarok has seen over the years. There are more examples of great careers, which have at least partly been made possible by contributing to a Free Software project.

If you are pondering about investing some time into Free Software, and you are wondering if this is really worth it: I think we can answer this question with a very clear:

Yes.

The Old Gang: Seb, Ian, Mark, Max, Muesli