[CS-FSLUG] The Moral Foundation of Free Software

[Don Parris]

On Sat, 1 Jan 2005 18:26:08 -0800, David Aikema <daikema at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 1 Jan 2005 17:12:22 -0500, Aaron Patrick Lehmann
> <lehmanap at cs.purdue.edu> wrote:
> 
> > Econoline is a a copyrighted (or patented, or both) design.  Has a church
> > violated some obscure moral principal in using an Econoline versus designing
> > their own ChurchVan?
> ...
> > I propose that in a vast array of situations, a closed source alternative is
> > better stewardship nowadays.  More and more, students are taught how to use
> 
> I agree.  The church's goal should be to direct people to Christ
> rather than open source software.  If the two goals happen to
> coincide, then so be it, but otherwise...
> 
The Church's primary mission is to preach Christ.  If, however, we are
refusing to fulfill our obligation to help our neighbors by agreeing
to a EULA that says we cannot do so, then we contradict the very
Gospel we preach.  I am now reminded of Jesus telling about the folks
who weren't taking care of their parents because they had "given their
money to God".  This also resonates strongly (with me anyway) where
people defend proprietary software on the grounds that they contribute
money to charity.

In my view, people would not have to volunteer near the time at the
church if proprietary vendors were not so confounded greedy - which
comes back to what Norbert says about greed.  Microsoft came to
Charlotte back in the Summer andcontributed a hefty sum of money to a
local charity aimed at helping charities to use technology.  That was
really unnecessary, given that they could simply reduce the cost of
their software  to a reasonable level to begin with.

Consider that now, the OS alone costs nearly as much as the hardware
combined on a modern entry-level desktop PC.  Back when I bought my
first box, DOS & Windows 3.11 together didn't cost as much.


<SNIP>


-- 
DC Parris GNU Evangelist
http://matheteuo.org/
gnumathetes at gmail.com
Free software is like God's love - 
you can share it with anyone anywhere anytime!