[sword-devel] conversations with Stallman

[Timothy R. Butler]

Hi,
> I have often compared Stallman to socialism.  While I think there are
> practical benefits to the O.S. movement, I believe their is an ideology or
> better a philosophy that tends to undergird it which is unbiblical, that
> is, to own something is wrong.  The socialist view is very analogous to an

  I agree, but I might point out I think you are referring to the "free 
software movement." The open source movement smells a lot less socialist 
(yest there is a difference between the two). A friend of mine pointed out 
recently several reasons why he thought Christians should use open source 
software:

  1.) Would you rather have your church spend $10,000 to move the new PC's to 
WinXP, OfficeXP, and networking them together with Windows.net, or spend $50 
bucks for a Linux distro, and spend $9,950 on missions or evangelism or Bible 
translation (I couldn't resist throwing that last one in)?

  2.) The ideology of open source, in some ways, seems very Christian. It 
encourages the community to help each other, and to work together. This is 
something that parallels the way Christians at least *should* work together.
 
  3.) Back to money, would it be better to spend $1,500 on Office, Windows, 
Bible study software, and whatever else for your home PC, or to spend $50 and 
give $1,450 to a local Christian food bank or help your church meet it's 
budget?

  Clearly socialism is (very) dangerous, but open source can be very 
capitalistic too, RedHat proves that.

  -Tim


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