Linux and Religion

Evan Leibovitch evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg at public.gmane.org
Wed Feb 7 16:35:05 UTC 2007


John Wildberger wrote:
> What has Linux to do with Religion?. Nothing!
>   
I guess you haven't seen Richard Stallman don a robe, put an old
mainframe disk platter on his head and refer to himself as 'Saint
iGNUcius'. I wish I could make that up; I've seen him do it twice.
http://www.gnu.org/people/saintignucius.jpg

There is no question that some in the community that the philosophy of
free software is itself based on certain fundamental beliefs about human
nature, and could qualify by some definitions as religion.

Arguably, the main difference between the philosophies of "open source"
and "free software" are that "open source" people believe that this
stuff is more efficient, more secure, better value and a better use of
resources, while "free software" advocates simply believe that software
freedom is a moral imperative.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html

> And yet, I find myself thinking of how much the mindset of Linuxers has in 
> common with religious goals.
> Let me list some of the similarities as they come to mind:
>
> -My religion is better than yours. My distro is better than yours.
> -Any religion other than mine is evil. Any OS other than Linux should be 
> shunt.
> -Close your mind to the doctrines and merits of other alternatives.
> -Spread your believes by any means, regardless, if it is asked for or not.
> -Be disparaging and disruptive of the endeavors of those outside your own 
> brand
>   
I think in the above you're confusing 'religion' (which a belief system)
and 'advocacy' (which is the energetic promotion of one approach to an
issue in preference over other similar approaches). Indeed, many of the
statements above could apply to simple marketing tactics.

Having said that -- to infer religion is to talk about moral codes and
matters of philosophy on human nature, and there are certainly many
examples of that within our community.

> The effort of spreading the gospel of Linux has a lot of merit for for those 
> who derive some financial gain by the increase of the number of Linux users. 
> For me it has the benefit of getting more information published, which in 
> turn will help the development of better distros. So, more power to those 
> people who weathered the cold in front of the Icehouse to get some Linux 
> publicity.
>   
If you recall how this thread started, it was about the fact that the
largest publicity it generated was _negative_.  While existing geeks and
Linux fans thought it was a neat idea, outsiders -- the ones they're
trying to convince -- derided  it.

I'm not knocking advocacy events; I've helped to stage a few of them
myself, and I applaud the efforts of others here, including GTALUG, in
its efforts to get the word out. However, the Ice House event was poorly
planned (city permits, anyone?) reactive rather than active (why have
Microsoft dictate the time and place of your efforts?) and amateurly
staged. Of the sincerity and eagerness of the participants I have no
doubt, but their energy could have been put to much better effect; this
community has been around for a decade and has learned some lessons in
the past about getting the kind of publicity that appeals to the
audience that doesn't yet know or understand Linux. The Icehouse event
was a bad tactic, badly conceived, and the publicity results bear that
out. The handful of people who were receptive at the event does not
balance out the tens of thousands who were exposed to the negative
article at CRN; the damage far outweighed the benefit.

It's no coincidence that two of the biggest critics of the event --
Marcel and me -- are professional writers who have deep background into
the challenges of getting positive publicity, and an awareness of the
attitudes of the people the community is trying to sway. Both of us have
dedicated big chunks of our careers to promoting Linux and open source
to the masses, and appreciate any reasonable attempt at doing so. This
was not one of them.

- Evan

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