I've been doing Open-Source since 1999 when I started submitting patches and discussing stuff on the Apache Cocoon Mailinglist. After that I moved towards Tomcat and Jboss but sort of lost track on how many projects I'm actually involved in.

In general I enjoy preparing new paths for the masses to follow. If something's well established and everyone is talking about it, I usually loose interest. But promising new technologies, which are still a little rough around the edges, this is where I get my kicks from.

2018 I had the luck and the joy that I was allowed to initiate an open-source project as part of my paid day-job at codecentric. Apache PLC4X is a set of libraries allowing unified access to PLCs of all different sorts of vendors without having to replace or retrofit existing devices. PLC4X has become one major enabler of Industry 4.0, Industrial IoT etc.

Unfortunately the industry is hesitant to try new things, so the amount of consulting work this generated is very limited. This resulted in the situation where in 2020 during the Corona lockdown, I had to decide what to give up: My baby - Apache PLC4X or my permanent position at codecentric. I decided to stick to my project.

I am now mainly doing unpaid community support for the past months, hoping for some paid gigs. Unfortunately these are not that common.

I'm not planning on getting myself a nice boat or a fancy car or whatsoever, I just want to be able to keep doing what I love and which really seems to bring some benefit to the world. (At least from the mailing lists, I can see companies and people from all over the world using the software I create). In order to be able to continue doing that I need a relatively low minimum income.