I recently had an opportunity again to note that I like to call my self an amateur. While relating this I also specified that the word comes from amare, "to love". I just checked this and my anecdote appears to be actually correct.

This led me to think about words some more. I have a particular dislike for "hobbyist" because I associate "hobbyists" with sloppy and immature work. Technically, I do carry out my contributions as a "hobby" but I just don't like this term. (To be fair, I do have a number of sloppy and immature projects. Not my best work though.)

Another approach is to consider my self a content creator. Recently I came across someone rejecting this phrase, but I didn't agree with that. Calling my work "content" isn't wrong, and I don't dislike it.

However, I do also consider my self a specialist or an expert on certain topics. The elusive amateur-specialist? The german wiktionary also led me to the german noun "Fachkraft" ("technical staff") which tastes like an employment relation. So that doesn't apply to me I'd think. Though I would claim I am "vom Fach" ("of the technical subject matter").

Not to be too pretentious, but I also consider some of what I do as an "ehrenamtliche" activity. That word, from "Ehre" (honour) and "Amt" (duty), means volunteer work or honorary work. I don't believe there are many use cases for projects in my particular niche, but I do think I'm volunteering my contributions to a number of free software projects, some of which are more modern and practical than low-level 8086 DOS software.

That's "free" as in freedom, of course. I don't particularly want to give to proprietary developments - it is a plus if they do benefit, but it isn't the greater goal. Free software to me means anyone can use, share, and modify my works as they wish. This ties in to the Ehrenamt in that I don't create purely for my own enjoyment but to give back and share my works.

I also like the word libre to describe software that comes with freedoms. Open source is not as good a term because the sources to a program can be "open" without it being distributed as free software. For instance, the original Caldera OpenDOS release certainly was intended as "open source" but failed to grant the freedoms needed for free software. In practice, most OSI-approved "open source" licenses are also free software licenses, but people do occasionally use the term without implying OSI approval.