I want to take this chance to thank at list some of the people
I owe to, because they allowed to make EtherApe possible:

* The Free Software Foundation, and RMS, for:
  - the GNU utilities
  - the GPL
  - initiating GCC and glibc
  - making "free software" ;-) popular.
  - autoconf and automake
  - gettext
  - establishing agreed upon standards for software development and
    distribution
  - probably so many other things I'm forgetting now.
  
  Thanks to Miguel de Icaza the FSF learnt about the humble hardware that
  EtherApe was developed on, and they provided me with a great new PC, which
  unfortunately took too long to be put to use with EtherApe development
  because of my later internship with Nokia, a faulty CPU and a extremely
  imcompetent online hardware shop.
  
  Nowadays it has finally been put to good use, and it's thanks
  to them that I can recompile EtherApe so fast that I can provide
  rpm packages, or that I can stress test EtherApe, for instance.
  
* Linus Torvalds and the kernel crew
  - What else could I be running on my old home network?
  - Do I really need to say more?
  
* Peter Mattis, Spencer Kimball, Josh MacDonald and the rest of
  the GTK+ crew
  - For such an easy to code for C toolkit

* Miguel de Icaza, Federico Mena Quintero, the rest of the 
  GNOME crew
  - Making GUI development more friendly
  - The wonderful gnome_canvas widget. EtherApe is only a demo
    program of basic gnome_canvas capabilities.
  - Being there so that there are some Spanish names on this list
    ˇHola, chicos! :-)

* Damon Chaplin, and other glade developers.
  - Making as easy as snapping your fingers to use all of
    the above.

* Ethereal authors: Gerald Combs, Laurent Deniel, and the rest
  - The source of "inspiration" (read blatant copy & paste) 
    for my source code.
  - Licensing ethereal under the GPL so that others like me
    could learn and build upon it.
    
* Authors of cvs and openssh
  - More open tools to do open works.

* All EtherApe users.
  - The reason I made EtherApe, in the first place.
  - Thanks for their comments
  - Thanks for their patches
  
* The original Etherman authors.
  - For giving me the idea to copy their work. :-)
  
* VA Research and SourceForge maintainers
  - For providing such efficient resources to develop and 
    publish OSS.
    
* Debian developers.
  - My GNU/Linux distribution of choice. 
  - Run apt-get install gnome-lib-dev libpcap-dev. I love it. :-)
  
* All documentation writers.
  - Easy to read howtos, books, and api references made
    EtherApe possible with no previous knowledge of
    neither GTK nor GNOME

* David Pollard.
  All developers would love to have helpful users like him.
  Bug reporter, interesting suggestions, "real time" tester... 
  Ahh, the wonders of the internet. :-)
  
* Jim Howard.
  Jim is the David Pollard of the 21st century. He has decided that
  EtherApe must be a crash proof app that he can run 24/7 and it's 
  thanks to him that this program is getting seriously tested in a rough
  environment.

* All the helpful people of #gtk+, like mailund.

* ESR.
  - His super famous paper, which I first read even before it
    was published on slashdot :-), has been the guide for 
    the development process of EtherApe. And, boy, does 
    it work! 

* Jon Tombs, my local Unix guru. How many people can claim to 
  have been taught linux by someone on the kernel AUTHORS list? :-)
  
* Jorge Chávez. Those endless hours in his office are priceless.
  There's no better way to learn about computers and technology
  than by having fun in such techno-theme-park. ;-)

* Last, but not least, my girlfriend, Mónica, for putting up with 
  a many to many relationship between us and my computers. :-)
  

If you read this far, now take some breath: rant mode on.

The reader is probably already a believer of open source software,
but I want to point out how nice it is to be there and realize
this by experience.

As of version 0.1.2, EtherApe reached hundreds of users to whom 
it's useful, has been ported to at least one operating system
different than it was built on and has improved
thanks to user patches.

And guess what. Version 0.1.2 has been developed in 7 days on 
an old 486 with 48Mb of memory, at the comfort of my home, using
just a 28.8kbps link connected to my 8Mb 486 router, mail server,
WWW proxy, all running Linux (anybody has an old 36pin bank to 
spare? :-)). And everything I needed I simply downloaded. 
I really didn't think it would be this easy.

It's not that I'm smart at all, it's the wonders of the 
collaborative efforts worldwide, the synergy of a movement 
that is changing  the world. A movement that allows an
individual putting very little effort from sunny Seville
to make a bit happier many other people all over the globe.

Today I feel happy. It's the realization that we are making
a better world. :-)
