My name is Tord Jansson,  I'm 26 years old and live in Malmö, Sweden, together with my girlfriend Mia.

I've been working as a programmer and team leader for the Swedish game developer UDS for about 6 years, but left them a while ago to set up my own software company. When writing this I'm currently in the process of trying to get investors, partners and developing the first product. If it will succeed is something the future will have to tell.

I started writing BladeEnc in spring '98 as a hobby project since my mp3 encoder of choice (mpegEnc by SoloH) was the only one I trusted to produce high quality 256 kBit mp3-files, but was very slow. I therefore downloaded the ISO reference source (which mpegEnc was based on) and started restructuring and optimizing it while being carefull not to degrade the quality. After a while I had something that was more than twice as fast as mpegEnc so I decided to polish it up a bit and release it for Windows (the only OS I used back then). Another reason for me to develop BladeEnc was that the stress and pressure at work had taken all the fun out of coding for me, I instinctively felt that I needed a hobby project to find back to the creativity and fun of programming.

Since then BladeEnc has become a popular encoder which has been converted to nearly all computer platforms still in use. The job on BladeEnc also opened up my eyes for Linux and the ideas of The Free Software Movement.  Today I'm a strong believer in both the ethical superiority and practical benefits of free software ("free as in speech" software, not freeware) and see myself as an advocate for free software and open standards.  I've also been exposed to the dangers and unfairness of treating information and ideas as property and therefore strongly opposes patents on software, "look-and-feel" and business models.

I urge everyone still not familiar with the ideas of free software to read some of the historical and philosophical texts on the issue. Please see the link section for useful links.

I have a personal page on www.advogato.org/person/TordJ/ with a diary that I update now and then.