Fellowship interview with Timo Jyrinki

“He has worked on computer graphics for much of his life, with a
particular interest in human-computer interaction, and spends a lot
of his current time making improvements to embedded systems. I had
a lovely interview with Timo, in which he shared his thoughts on
user interfaces, the Free Software situation in Finland and how
businesses should let the community lead.

“Stian Rødven Eide: Your involvement with GNU/Linux
started while you were active in the demoscene, which was rather
huge in Finland during the nineties. Were you already familiar with
the philosophy of Free Software at that time? Was the culture of
studying, sharing and improving each other’s code relevant to the
demoscene?

“Timo Jyrinki: I don’t think I was really familiar with the Free
Software philosophy at all at that time, and not even for some time
after starting to use GNU/Linux. The demoscene did have an
atmosphere of improving on other’s ideas, but actually seeing code
was mostly totally out of the question, except for maybe some
snippets. My real introduction to Free Software came from my
involvement with Wikipedia.”

Complete
Story