I am a computer programmer, poker player, amateur philosopher (specifically a devotee of Karl Popper), and a dilettante at just about everything else. I am Wikipedia user #43. My major accomplishment here is that I was the initial author of the current MediaWiki software, though like many free software projects it has grown far beyond my initial code. Magnus, Brion, Tim and I won the Usenix STUG award for that. I recently retired from my job as embedded systems engineer at Ansync Labs. I spend most of my online time on Facebook [1].
I am not a lawyer. I have studied the law and follow intellectual property law in particular as an involved citizen, and have strong opinions about it (as I do about everything else). Indeed, those opinions are a major reason for my involvement here. I often express those opinions here, as is my right under the first amendment. These opinions should not be construed as legal advice; you rely on my interpretations of the law at your own peril. If you want a definitive legal opinion, you should seek the advice of a licensed professional (most of whom will probably know less about the issue than I do, but who will have lobbied for laws protecting their monopoly and requiring me to post silly disclaimers like this).
I am skeptical of the value of copyrights and patents (and intellectual property law in general, except perhaps for trademarks). In particular, "All creative works or inventions original to me, Lee Daniel Crocker, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used in whole or in part for any purpose without permission or notification." I do ask that you not claim to have created anything that I created, but most legal systems mistakenly treat attribution as an intellectual property right, so I cannot legally enforce this without claiming a copyright.