[eleutheros-en] Re: Thoughts
- From: Parménides GV <parmegv@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: eleutheros-en@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 5 Dec 2011 00:28:01 +0100
Hello everybody,
I would suggest to partition this post in 2, for example. We should not
be unaware of the way Internet documents are read, and I'm sure that a
lot of people seeing this whole post would be frightned just because
its length.
On the other hand, it's a good starting point. It would be great to
post links to this writing shortened by ur1 in social networks,
specially in the xt3 one. Church must know what battle we are fighting.
On Sun, Dec 04, 2011 at 01:25:07PM +0200, Casey Callaghan wrote:
> I know what it's like to be busy. Nonetheless, I've been working on
> some thoughts that might make a reasonable blog post (it probably
> needs a fair amount of editing):
>
> Free Software and the Early Church
>
> The early Church, in the time shortly after the Ascension of Jesus,
> was a place of generosity and sharing - the early believers shared all
> they had, and none found himself lacking in necessities. This is well
> illustrated by Acts 4, verse 32 to 35:
>
> "The group of believers was one in mind and heart. None of them
> said that any of their belongings were their own, but they all shared
> with one another everything they had. With great power the apostles
> gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and God poured
> rich blessings on them all. There was no one in the group who was in
> need. Those who owned fields or houses would sell them, bring the
> money received from the sale, and turn it over to the apostles; and
> the money was distributed according to the needs of the people."
>
> Of course, they did not at that time have access to software of any
> kind; but let us consider the different types of software that are
> available today, and compare them against the generosity of that early
> spiritual mindset.
>
> There are a great variety of software types available for use today,
> with many shadings and gradations. Proprietary software is a
> well-known and well-marketed type; free software is becoming very
> popular in certain areas; and some pieces of software are licensed in
> a way that allows them to be shared, but also allows modified versions
> of the software to be released in a proprietary form.
>
> First, I will provide a brief definition of each of these types of
> software; and then I will compare them with the early Church.
>
> Proprietary software can be defined as that software which is rented
> out by a company for a lump sum. The source code is generally not
> provided; users of proprietary software are generally warned in
> strenuous terms not to give it to anyone else, except under very
> narrow conditions; the aim being so that the company that provides the
> software can continue to profit by selling it to others. An example of
> such software is the Microsoft Windows operating system.
>
> Free software, as defined by the Free Software Foundation
> (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) is software which
> embodies four essential freedoms; the freedom to run the program for
> any purpose; the freedom to study and to modify the program (requiring
> access to the necessary source code); the freedom to redistribute the
> program; and the freedom to redistribute modified copies of the
> program to others. One common way in which to enforce this definition
> is to use the GNU General Public License, or GPL. An example of such
> software is the Linux operating system.
>
> Public domain software is released without license encumbrances of any
> sort; BSD-style licensed software is released with a license requiring
> only attribution and a disclaimer of warranty. Such software can be
> used for any purpose, including adding it to either free or
> proprietary codebases at any point in time. An example of such
> software is the FreeBSD operating system.
>
> PROPRIETARY SOFTWARE
>
> Most proprietary software is protected from redistribution by various
> legal threats; fines and jail time may be threatened for
> redistributors. Many of the early Apostles were no strangers to jail
> time; they were often imprisoned, and would have been quite willing to
> face further jail time for something that they felt was right. I
> personally suspect that they would not have risked jail time for the
> unauthorised distribution of software - the longer that they were
> free, the more time they could spend in spreading God's message.
> However, in the case of most proprietary software, it is technically
> possible to share it by letting someone else use the installation
> discs (though this is illegal in many places, and software companies
> are finding ways to prevent it).
>
> Though such software can be shared between large groups, it has a flaw
> in that it cannot generally be improved; in order to obtain an
> improved version of the software, one has to wait for the authors to
> release one. And should the company go out of business and all copies
> of the source code be lost, further improvements are impossible; the
> only way to get an improved version at that point is for someone to
> re-create the original software with improvements.
>
> FREE SOFTWARE
>
> In this case, the ability to redistribute the software at will is
> guaranteed. Though there may still be restrictions involved in some
> countries (e.g. export controls) these restrictions are not imposed by
> the software license, but rather by external agencies.
>
> Unlike proprietary software, free software can be improved on by
> anyone who knows how to make improvements. As an added bonus, access
> to the source code gives a student an example to learn from, to teach
> him or her how to write code and therefore how to make improvements.
>
> A common free software license, the GNU GPL, requires that any
> modified versions of software released under the GPL be also released
> under the GPL. This is an intentional feature of the license; should
> someone wish to incorporate a GPL text-editing library in a program,
> forcing that program to also use the GPL increases the amount of
> software released under the GPL.
>
> PUBLIC DOMAIN AND BSD-STYLE LICENSES
>
> Such software can be used, modified, and redistributed at will - under
> any license. It can therefore be folded into a free or proprietary
> software product at will, in which case the comments under those
> sections will apply. The biggest difference between this software and
> free software is that free software cannot be legally included in a
> proprietary system; public domain and BSD-licensed software can be.
>
> CONCLUSION
>
> Software is unique in that it can be given and retained at the same
> time - we can both have our cake and eat it. Given this, the generous,
> sharing spirit of the early Church is only a sensible response; and
> free software, public-domain software and BSD-licensed software make
> this an easy option to exercise. Though many people are unskilled in
> improving software, those who are skilled can make continual
> improvements and share these with everyone else, to the benefit of
> all.
>
>
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