You promised me Broadway was waiting for me, a freeborn man of the U.S.A.

I used to write shareware. Some people would just send money with a brief thank-you note. Some people would adopt the attitude that I was beholden to them once I cashed their checks. Since the customer is always right, I was faced with the pressure of customer-directed development. For that and other reasons, I stopped writing shareware.

My next mistake was to release everything as postcardware. I did not immediately realize that this was wrong, and I enjoyed the influx of postcards from various places. Never underestimate the power of a simple 53-byte executable to make random people happy.

In time, I stopped writing postcardware.

Many years later, someone offered me something, with the condition that I do something in Debian that I would have not done otherwise. Another individual was offered the exact same inducement with the exact same condition. We both accepted.

I kept my end of the bargain. The other guy reneged. Sometimes I wonder if he inadvertantly did the right thing.

Since then I have been paid to work on free software, but never directly on Debian.