As I write more about Freedom Software in the Church, I have just begun to collect my articles in a central location where they are easier to find. Find out more about Freedom Software and the importance of using it in the church.
“‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; …O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” - Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Perhaps the most frustrating thing for me as an advocate for the use of Free(dom) software in the church is explaining the term “Free Software.” What does that mean? Most people, hearing that name, think “freeware” - any software that is free to use without serious limitations. But, of course, that’s only half of the meaning behind the term.
No organization in the United States has a stronger incentive for using open source software than the Church.
“The Church is always asking for money!” - Everyone.
In a way, that’s right; the church is always in need of money. Money for ministry, outreach, and evangelism. Money for books and materials. Money to pay salaries and maintain facilities. Money to pay for seminary education (I had to slide that one in!). And so on. Sure, there are preachers who extort money from their parishioners, flying around in private jets and all that, but every church I’ve ever been in has a budget to meet. Those budgets are met with contributions offered to God, and church staffs have a responsibility to manage that money wisely.
Church budgets are zero-sum. Money spent on administrative overhead (e.g. computers and software) can’t be spent on education, mission, and ministry. The most compelling argument for open source software in churches, therefore, is that open source is Free.
But, churches are non-profit institutions. Instead of paying hundreds of dollars for Microsoft Office, you might get a Microsoft Charity License for $50. Many vendors are now providing this service for non-profit organizations. This drives the cost of software acquisition down, and proprietary software begins to look attractive again. Oh, how the waters are muddied!
I’m not going to lie: it’s hard to argue against cheap MS Office. But when you examine the total cost of ownership of both proprietary and open source software, you also have to consider the hidden costs. Maintaining up-to-date records of all of your software licenses, ensuring that your church’s license keys aren’t borrowed and used for other purposes, etc. can drive up the cost of proprietary software dramatically. Nevertheless, it may still seem less expensive to choose proprietary software.
So if church budgets are tightly constrained, and managing money wisely is a matter of responsibility to God, then why pay more for software? The same reason people buy Fair Trade Coffee. Not only does it taste better, but by buying fair trade coffee you support sustainable agriculture and economic justice.
Churches (in particular) have already embraced the responsibility of paying slightly more for a better quality product that is better aligned with their goal of justice for the world. Open source software is better quality and more consonant with Christian principles than proprietary software. If the principles of open source are more fair and just, the church ought to give it priority over proprietary software, even if it costs us slightly more to implement.
I plan to write further on the relationship between Christian doctrine and open source software. In the meantime, thank you to the many readers and commenters of my first article in this series, “Three steps to Open Source in the Church.”
The history and legacy of the Church in the late 1990s and 2000s will be lost in 10 years because we will lack the software to open its’ data.
Check out this Microsoft KB article. It describes a (very complicated, very technical) process for reconfiguring your computer after Office 2003 Service Pack 3 quietly disables the ability to open certain older file formats. I’m certain that my grandma can follow that to access the old recipes she typed into her computer 10 years ago, aren’t you?
I’ve been warning people for a long time about the danger of relying upon proprietary software to maintain access to archived data. If you don’t control the format or the software, there’s no guarantee that you will be able to access your data in the future. Case in point: I have a number of old school files created using Lotus Word Pro 97. I still own a copy of the software, but the only Windows operating system I have is XP, and LWP97 won’t install on Windows XP. So I have files, software to read the files, and yet I can’t get access to my own data. Presumably I could pay someone to make conversion software, but why should I pay a second time to access my data?
The church has thousands of copies and fragments of manuscripts of the New Testament. We’ve retained the ability to access the physical data (paper/papyrus is universal and long-lasting) and the format (they make me study Koine Greek), so there’s little risk of that original data being lost. But for tens of thousands of sermons written every Sunday and stored in proprietary file formats, that data may be available next week and next year, but what about ten years? Twenty? Will you still be able to access CD-ROM drives or your current hard drive? Will you continue shelling out for Microsoft Office 2017, no matter what they charge you for it? If you do, will they turn off access to your old data’s file format one day without asking you?
The solution is simple: open standards.
1. Begin thinking about how you can use open source software, which doesn’t cost any money at all, to replace closed source alternatives that will only lock you into proprietary formats. For example, use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. It’s just as good as Microsoft Office for most tasks, and best of all, it’s free!
2. Save your files in ODT (OpenDocument) format, a popular open-source document format that any programmer can implement for free, so that there will always be software to open your old documents. That’s what many US states and other national governments are beginning to do.
3. Always, always keep good backups and migrate those backups to new mediums promptly so that you don’t have 5.25″ floppy disks hanging around anymore. Right now, your files should be stored on CDs and hard drives, not 3.5″ floppies, 5.25″ floppies, ZIP disks, LS120 disks, etc.
The issues of abortion, euthanasia, the war, and political and economic justice place myself and many other people in a trap between the two major political parties in the United States. Often times people like me have been derided as “single issue voters,” though that has never been true for me. The choices involved, presented from a Roman Catholic perspective but holding universal application, are well presented in this article from the First Things blog.
Certainly, a Catholic elected to public office must make prudential judgments on how to best advance the rights and the dignity of the human person. There are many issues, in fact most issues, where Catholic politicians may disagree and adopt different policy positions—a just immigration policy, for example, or public-assistance programs for the poor, or health-care policy, or military engagement, or taxation policies.
At the same time, there are circumstances where to support a particular policy involves approval of an intrinsic evil.
I was chatting with one of my professors today, and she mentioned a high-tech savvy Wartburg graduate a few years ago who went on internship to a rural congregation. By rural, she meant “no high speed internet.” We went on to have a lovely conversation about how backwards the church often can be with regards to technology.
My conclusion: You can send me anywhere, but pretty please let there be hot and cold running internet! Otherwise I’ll have to drag said congregation kicking and screaming into the 21st century.
MeanDean of HealYourChurchWebsite posted about how wikis are great for content management on the cheap. I LOVE wikis!
At IdeaWorks, we use Trac, an open source wiki with bug tracker and source code viewer built in. Jennifer and I also use MediaWiki to organize information about daily life - projects, todo lists, grocery shopping, you-name-it. The free-form organization means that you can constantly re-factor your information, and since you can go back and look at pages’ revisions, you never lose any data.
I think I’m going to try to talk my church into using a wiki for projecty stuff here soon.
Luke 5:1-11: The Calling of the First Disciples
One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.
When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”
Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”
When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.
When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners.
Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.
As Jennifer and I listened to the Gospel Reading this Sunday morning, we both thought of it in a new way:
These fishermen were men who worked hard to accomplish their goals, but often times their lives were still difficult and their futures still uncertain. After a long, frustrating night, Jesus tells them to try one last time - and when they do, they are rewarded with success beyond what they could possibly imagine.
The story doesn’t end there, though.
Their reaction is to realize that Jesus was the source of their earthly success, that their fulfillment was in him, not in what they could ever do for themselves, and they left the fish on the beach. Jesus had shown that he had power to give them what they needed most, but instead of clinging to the stuff he had given them, they clung to the Giver.
Jennifer and I see that in our lives. Jennifer was given admission to medical school and the intellectual ability to finish, even despite her medical difficulties, if she had so desired. I’ve had a short but successful career in computer science. We recognize that both of these things are fulfillment of long-held dreams, but we are turning and following the Fulfiller. I’ll take an uncertain future with a faithful God who has already given me satisfaction and purpose over any life I plan for myself - even if that means I have to leave everything on the beach.
Dinesh D’Souza has an article in the Christian Science Monitor (which, to quote some of my opponents in debate rounds in high school, are biased neither towards Christians, Scientists, or Monitors) entitled Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history. Too many people blame religion for the problems of the world, when in reality the secular impulse and the rejection of God from politics and social life has, in the past few decades, caused more bloodshed than religion has in the past 2000 years. From the article:
Whatever the motives for atheist bloodthirstiness, the indisputable fact is that all the religions of the world put together have in 2,000 years not managed to kill as many people as have been killed in the name of atheism in the past few decades.
It’s time to abandon the mindlessly repeated mantra that religious belief has been the greatest source of human conflict and violence. Atheism, not religion, is the real force behind the mass murders of history.
People who separate their moral views from their political action are surely separating the source of all human rights from the forum in which human rights are deliberated and protected. The secular world is screaming that religion is responsible for the world’s problems, particularly the worst and most intractable problems, and by failing to assert our viewpoints in the public square, the church is agreeing enthusiastically. While it is still the church’s responsibility to renounce the violence that has been (and in a few places continues to be) done in Jesus’ name, I’m really sick of all of the self-flaggellation. The truth preached by the Church is Christ crucified - and that is the hope of the world. It’s time we start remembering that.
In the aftermath of the Republican meltdown this week, I was even more sure that I’m a political mutt, but I think that I’ve found a category that suits me better: Christian Democracy. The wikipedia article outlines the “typical” Chrisian Democrat viewpoints:
* In common with liberalism, an emphasis on human rights and individual initiative.
* In contrast to liberalism, a rejection of secularism, and an emphasis on the fact that the individual is part of a community and has duties towards it.
* In common with conservatism, conservative moral values (i.e. on issues such as marriage, divorce, abortion etc.), a view of the evolutionary development of society, an emphasis on law and order, and a rejection of communism.
* In contrast to conservatism, open to change (e.g. in the structure of society) and not necessarily supportive of the social status quo.
* In common with socialism, a strong emphasis on social solidarity (i.e. the welfare state, prioritising alleviation of poverty, high taxes on the wealthy, etc.) and a willingness to restrain market forces.
* In contrast to socialism, supports capitalism and a market economy, does not advocate class struggle, and unlike revolutionary socialism, rejects violence as a means to achieve social change.
That would be me, with the exception that I have less in common with socialism, I oppose the “welfare state” because non-profit and faith-based organizations do a way better job of taking care of needy people with the money they are given, and I tend to think that restraining market forces is a last resort.
