Concluding my FSF internship, and the BTCPay extension

My internship with the Free Software Foundation has come to an end, and it’s been an amazing experience.

I was able to build, test, and publish a CiviCRM extension that will help the FSF receive Bitcoin and Litecoin payments on their platform by integrating with a self-hosted BTCPay Server.

I am very grateful to the FSF tech team -- Ian, Andrew, Ruben, and Michael -- for supporting me and encouraging me to go as far as I did with the extension. After building and testing the extension, I honestly never imagined I’d be able to get it listed on the CiviCRM extensions directory, and I would not have bothered submitting the extension for a formal review if I didn’t get that push from the team. I am also grateful to all the FSF staff that I got to interact with during my internship, for making me feel welcome in the FSF community.

In the blog I wrote at the beginning of my internship, I mentioned that I’d be busy coming up with ways to tangibly support the Free Software movement beyond my internship. So here’s some of the things I came up with.

Firstly, I changed my primary operating system (OS) a few weeks ago. I am now using a flavor of GNU/Linux, and it’s been a bit difficult to adjust so far: I really miss some of the games I used to play, but I intend to stick with this new OS till the end of the year, at least. I don't know yet if it will be a permanent switch.

I learned a lot about software licensing during my internship. So, secondly, if I can control the license of any digital work (code or art) that I create, I will release it under a GPL compatible license. I must point out, however, that I may not be able to control the license of my work because I may not always have the opportunity to work for a company that produces and maintains primarily free software.

Finally, I have become an associate member of the FSF, and I look forward to joining and supporting even more organizations that are committed to fighting for freedom.