Charm
I use Charm to back up my LJ. It didn't do exactly what I wanted, but it was written in Python so I just put up with it. Today I bit the bullet and made my first-ever changes to a Python program! I posted my results to ljcharm. The author can take my changes or leave them, but in the meantime my local copy of her program obeys my command. The programs on my laptop work for *me*, not for their authors-and not for those fatcats in Redmond who think that what I did should be a crime because I didn't get pre-authorization from the copyright holder.