Introducing myself

[Ruben Leote Mendes]

Hello,

As requested here is something about myself.

My name is Rúben and I was born 29 years ago in Lisbon - Portugal. 
I took a five year degree in electrical engineering. After that I kept studying
and took a masters degree also in electrical engineering. My thesis title was
"Telecommunication Systems Implementation using Programmable Logic Devices".
You can find it (in Portuguese only), and all the source code and schematics, 
in my webpage at http://www.nocturno.org/ruben .
I finished the masters degree last September and decided to leave Academia
and try my luck in the Industry. After talking to a friend we decided to
start our own company. The company will focus on Internet Services like
web hosting, web development/programming and consulting. We are just finishing 
incorporating the company and should start operating soon. 

My first contact with free software was around 1993 when I found Linux.
Coming from the MS-Windows world, I was fascinated by the availability of
all the source code in Linux for free. At this time my definition of free
was still more like "Beer" than like "Freedom". It all changed when I somehow
found the FSF homepage and Stallman's writings. His writings made me think
and soon I was a convert. :) There is one thing where I disagree with him,
probably because of my background in hardware. According to some interviews
I read, Stallman doesn't think that Free Hardware is really important as long
as manufacturers publish enough data to write free drivers. I think that
Free Hardware is also very important, specially because today we can describe
hardware using Hardware Description Languages. 

I really don't have any free software work I have done that is worth 
mentioning. I use free software almost exclusively and I hope that I can
license all software produced by my company as GPL. The only thing that I
hope proves my belief in free software and that my intentions are good 
is an email I sent to Linux Weekly News that was published in the Letters To
The Editor section. You can find it at http://lwn.net/2000/0323/backpage.php3
after scrolling down a little bit.

There is a lot of work to be done in Europe. I am particularly concerned
about the recent EU directive similar to the US DMCA, and also about the
software patents that are beeing considered. 

I hope we can work together and that we can soon meet personaly.

-- 
Rúben Leote Mendes - ruben at nocturno.org
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