Hello Everybody!
I'm thankful for having been invited to join you.
I'm starting with a presentation of myself. I realize now when I read this that i maybe is too personal, I don't know how well you know each others but I was told there weren't so mäny on the list. You don't need to read it if you aren't interested.
My name is Marcus Rejås. I'm a 32 year old computer engineer living in Norrtälje, a small city about 70km north of Stockholm.
I've been using Free Software since 1996 and got quite involved in the movement in 1998 when I was elected coordinator of the Swedish part of the Linux Documentation Project (TLDP). This assignment was of great importance to me and led to an appearance in Swedish TV were I was titled "Linuxentusiast" (sorry, there was no GNU, in my title) and told the reporter how great it was. Even though the TV-appearance was cool, the best thing with my involvement in the free software movement is that I since then and till today have not applied for one single job. Early 2000 I got as much as about two job-offers a month.
It also was a lot of job and it was probably that that made my fiancee at the time leave me (at least that is what I like to think).
Currently I'm making my living as a Free Software consultant in my own company[1]. I'm not getting rich but I manage to get food on the table. I have a family consisting of my fiancee, Jenny and our son Albin. In my spare time (if there was one) I would like to ride my motorcykle and go sailing during the summer.
I'm also involved in some projects where the ones taking most of my time is that I'm elected chairman of the Swedish Linux association[2], which is a non-profit organization that should promote Free and OpenSource Software in Sweden. Currently we have about 2750 members. The name of the organization is misleading but a name-change have been voted down.
I'm also runnging a projekt called Fritis.se[3], where we produces material for free software in the schools. We do not produce software in Fritis.se because there are other projects doing that, but we tries to make way for this software in the schools by supplying the things around it.
I'm trying to keep two blogs updated. One in Swedish[4] and one in english[5] but the intensity of posts vary a lot.
I probably missed a lot, but you are all free to ask.
Best regards,
/Marcus
[1] http://www.rejas.se [2] http://se.linux.org (Currently being converted from Plone to Drupal) [3] http://www.fritis.se [4] http://blog.rejas.se [5] http://www.fsfe.org/en/fellows/rejas/blog