Religion and Linux
Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 at 7:40 pm“Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments, or burthens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either . . .; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern …”
– Thomas Jefferson, A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom
“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”
– Thomas Jefferson, 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptist Association
Today I found out about a little Ubuntu fork called Christian Ubuntu. As far as I can tell, it exists with the full knowledge of not only Mark Shuttleworth, but with his and many of the developer’s blessing. As such, Ubuntu inadvertantly promotes Christianity.
And I find this offensive.
I messaged the Ubuntu-devel mailing list over my concerns over the existance of Christian Ubuntu, and at the time, I did not know that Ubuntu apparently supports their efforts. For my attempt to warn the Ubuntu developers of this gross misuse of the Ubuntu name, logo, and trademark, I was called a troll because I found Christian Ubuntu offensive.
Yeah, you heard me; apparently finding Christian Ubuntu offensive and alerting Ubuntu about the existance of the distro, I am trolling. According to this logic, Thomas Jefferson is trolling because he believes in a seperation of church and state.
To paraphrase Jefferson: to compel a man to furnish contributions of code and development resources for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical. I contemplate with the sovereign reverence that act of the whole Linux development community which declaired that their code be used to help all of mankind no matter race, religion, or class, that their licensing should, “make no rule respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of seperation between church and Linux.
So… open source software is fine, as long as someone doesn’t come along and use it in a way you disagree with? Especially those nasty Christian folk, talking about bibles and love and other scary stuff. If parents want to stop their kids surfing porn, they should set the filters up themselves, from the command-prompt. Horror of horrors, definitely worth dumping that ol’ distro and moving onto something less closed-minded, I mean open-minded, ummm, no wait. Darn, which one was it again?
Open source software is fine as long as people don’t (legally or otherwise) take people’s work and slander them with it.
I know many open source developers who are Jewish or Islamic or some other non-Christian religion.
Trying to brand their work as Christian to further the Christian religion is rather disturbing, and very close minded.
The whole thing sounds like a non-sequitur. Like microprocessor-controlled hammer. Buddhist grease gun. Islamic drill press. Shinto brake pad. Sheesh! I don’t see the connection between a computer OS and religion at all.
The difference is that Edubuntu is not religious oriented. Religion does not belong in Linux.
Hmm… they took ubuntu… added their own software (bible study & parental controls (dansguardian)), to make it easier for christian families to install linux and be happy with it…
Just like… hmm… they took ubuntu… added their own software (flash cards and study aids and educational games) to make it easier for parents to install linux as an educational tool for their kids and be happy with it…
I fail to see the difference.
I agree, I was totally disgusted to see the Ubuntu logo surrounded by the Christian fish. When I saw that this conflating of Ubuntu with Christianity was going to be tolerated by Canonical, I ditched Ubuntu and installed Debian.
Seriously people! All of you are blind. Ubuntu itself is an evil empire getting ready to dominate the world stage. It now has it’s own cult following, and soon we will see Ubuntu churches springing up like weeds in a flower garden. It does not matter if they support Christianity, Some african religion, Islam, or their own personal religion; this is their ploy to deceive the linux community. Their fanboys are already prostelisizing Ubuntu unto all nations. The audacity to use Linux as a platform to preach evil!
It seems to me that they’re promoting Ubuntu (and Linux) through Christianity and not vice-versa. Besides, I’m tempted to think this is a parody site. I’m not a religious person, but I’m certainly not offended by other people’s display of their religion; as far as I’m concerned they can do and say whatever they want. For all I care, even if someone set up Satan-Worshipping-Kitty-Eater-Ubuntu this would not make me want to stop using Ubuntu or change my opinion of it. F/OSS is F/OSS and this the religion I believe in.
Yes, and I have every right to stop advertising Ubuntu and introducing new users to Linux via Ubuntu and stop using Ubuntu on both of my computers as well. Which I am now seriously considering.
This is ridiculous… you simply cannot equate separation of church and state to church and linux…
While it was wrong of them to label you as ‘trolling’, and you are welcome to submit a complaint to them, they have every right and reason to ignore it.
I wouldn’t care if they forked Ubuntu and named it something totally different. That is the nature of Open Source. But they are, with the apparent go ahead of the Ubuntu project, using the Ubuntu name to promote a religion.
It just goes completely against what the Ubuntu project stands for.
I’m not sure I understand. Ubuntu is very much a private organisation not connected in any way to any sort of government. Why can’t the developer support religiously inclined projects?
I’m not an Ubuntu user, but this makes me lose “faith” in promoting it.
WTF is “Christian” Linux anyways? Does it come with bible-lib by default? Is “root” renamed to “Jesus” or “God”? And is the root account impossible to access without subverting the system with chroot and other methods? Is sudo renamed to “prayer” or “miracle”?
No, but seriously. This offends me as well. I’m surprised it even exists.
Religion and Linux…
nice…..
Clearly the only rational solution is to switch to FreeBSD and its satanic Beastie mascot.