I am a graduate student at Oregon State University pursuing a PhD in molecular and cellular biology. I use programming languages often to take notes, make presentations, make websites, and develop R packages. I am dedicated to open source, free (as in freedom) software. I use Ubuntu on both my work and home desktops. My hope is that free software will become the standard and paid software be restricted to non-essential and highly specialized uses (e.g. fancy video games [although I prefer those be free as well]), thus eliminating financial barriers for individuals and organizations. Software is one of the few things of value we can give to others without losing anything ourselves and we should take advantage of this marvellous attribute to form a symbiotic community of developers and users who each give a little and each get all.
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