How to be an awesome member of the Free Software community

No, this is not a tutorial, unfortunately. The main reason being that, while I strive to do my best, I don't consider myself to be an excellent member of the Free Software community, let alone be able to teach others about it. But this morning I got an email from the FSF about a campaign for St. Valentine's day, which reminded me of something I've been planning to do since a long time ago, but never got to it.

I want to publicly send huge thanks to Robin Mills from the Exiv2 project, and not only because I've been fruitfully using his work in three (!) projects of mine (PhotoTeleport, Mappero Geotagger and Imaginario), but also, and especially, for being an extremely pleasant interlocutor. On the web, yes. Whereas most people tend to be more thorny and touchy in their interactions over the internet, Robin has always been friendly and coversational, trying to form a bond with some complete foreigner who just happened to report a bug on Exiv2.

Just adding some bits of information about one's personal events (such as travels) can make an enormous difference on how one's attitude is perceived. Mentioning that you visited the place that is familiar to the bug reporter almost makes one forget of being sitting in front of a computer on the internet, because your mind flies to that place. Considering that even on this personal blog of mine I'm kind of reticent about speaking of my private life, I cannot help appreciating the friendly attitude that Robin reserves for people writing on a bug tracker.

You are a wonderful netizen, Robin. A happy Valentine Day to you and your family. Thank you.