About me and the website

Photo © MG

Hello! My name is Krzysztof. People sometimes call me Krzysiu, which is one of diminutives of my name. I come from Upper Silesia in Poland - once heavy industrialized region known mostly for coal mines. The closest resemblance would be Ruhr region in Germany. I think that the specific beauty of Upper Silesia, together with its nature, made photography my passion which started about 15 years ago. My other interests are IT in its wide meaning, cooking and growing plants, mostly herbs.

My profession is IT, which includes being PC and other modern devices technician, but also programming and webmastering. That's why I decided to make my own gallery system - Phronto Gallery. The name comes from the musical term pronto, meaning quick and photo. I don't consider it done. There's always something that can be improved. If you are interested in this script (including customizations), please contact me.

Both taking photos and coding this webpage is time-taking activity for which, in adult age, there's less and less time. Family won't feed on photos, unfortunately. That's why your donations are most welcomed and stimulating.

Open culture manifesto

I strongly support open culture - creating, sharing and using content and software without restrictions of further use, including remixing or even commercial use. I release many of my works on free license including media, texts and software. While I think that GNU movement was very important for the advance of digital age and creating open culture, I'm not that kind of guy. In my opinion GNU movement, which started and once had monopoly in open culture, has became cult alike thing with many repeated dogmas. I still can't understand how forcing somebody to freely release remix of my work is more free than allowing user to do, what s/he wants. Or how forcing strict terms of use helps in spreading ideas and works. That's why I strongly support Creative Commons which doesn't tell what's better, it just gives author freedom of choice. Alright, works only for non-commercial use or without right to remix aren't that good, but they wouldn't be free in any sense if authors would have a choice between GNU alike openness and nothing. I also dislike trying to be moral authority, like Richard Stallman does - telling that author does the bad and wrong thing when author wants to keep more rights than only attribution. While freedom of use is celebrated in GNU church, as people call it, licenses are forcing end-users to use same license, stick to the movement and create any derivative for their own sake. For years they basically were monopolists and killed many ideas of sharing the Internet by showing how bad is to think differently. Even now they feel they can review licenses as free or non-free, but thanks to Creative Commons, GNU movement has lost its authority. When it comes about me, I mostly choose CC BY license, which gives more freedom. It allows people, who use my work, to make their changes fully copyrighted. It's wrong to force anybody to join the cult. While GNU movement is jokingly called the church and the creator is said to be the saint of that church, I think that for many it's not only a joke. Not only terms are forced there, but there's something in the air which causes that people think it's bad to don't share. That photo which isn't available for commercial use is just unusable. The terms of use has overtaken the spirit of the work - the content. It doesn't matter if your music or photo is good, it just matters if it's on GNU license or not. The critique of author who doesn't want free licenses comes mostly from people who wouldn't re-use it. Unless noted, photos here are copyrighted, but if you'd give me your reasons for reusing it, I'll give you my decision. Probably you'd be free to use it, but still I want to have a control on that aspect of my creative work. And I don't think it's bad. Oh well. It's not bad.