On Saturday 01 March 2003 06:01 pm, Leon Brooks wrote: > On Sunday 02 March 2003 06:04 am, N Smethurst wrote: > > Informal questionnaires like this are > > always going to attract replies from proactive individuals who have a > > specific interest in pushing whatever the questionnaire is talking about. > > True, but in this case the majority of respondents have been nonChristian, > and the package started life a Christian-only.
That's what the Free in Free software is about. > > Out of all the replies, almost all of them have been from people who > > follow some type of religion. It's important to take this into account. No, it isn't. The same apparatus is essential for working with the numerous original versions of Shakespeare. I know people who want to apply it to Finnegans Wake. > You follow some type of religion, I guess. If it's `no-religion,' then it's > really a religion called `Atheism'. To call that non-religious would be > like saying zero is not a number, savvy? > > The alternative `no-religion' is `no-particular-religion,' and the name for > that is Agnosticism. An agnostic, by definition, cannot exclude religion. > > > Unfortunately, this goes against much of the grain of Christianity, > > which grew largely due to the activities of missionaries "converting" > > people. It could be construed that the inclusion of specialist software > > such as this would be the start of such a mission. IMHO, software should not be accepted or rejected based on ad hominem arguments, or what the developers want to use their creation for, as long as the Free software community has a use for it. > The project page itself states that this is its goal. They're going to get a shock, then, when they see their tools applied to the Lovecraft canon. > However, I would > refuse to exclude software on solely religious grounds becasue that would > make me *exactly* the same kind of despot as those allegedly Christian > missionaries who `converted' people by force or guile. Hear, hear. > The software is also very useful as a study framework for non-religious > material. Try it and see. I would specifically include it for that reason. > If you still have a problem with that approach, can I strongly suggest the > Open Source approach: publish nonChristian modules for use with it. > > ThML inherits from XML, so it shouldn't be too hard to find texts that > require almost no massaging to fit. > > For example, if you have a paper copy of /The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress/ > (Robert Heinlein) to hand, email a scan of the copyright page to show me > that you own the right to use it, and I'll whisk a Sword module for it back > your way. You can't get much more Atheist than Heinlein or Clarke. (-: I do, but I'll pass. Thank you, anyway. > > I'm afraid that my view on the inclusion of religion based software tools > > into a distribution such as Mandrake is not a positive step. > > If we were shipping texts as well, I would agree (unless we shipped texts > for a variety of religions, hopefully including Atheism). One of my pet projects. I'm trying to get some of the organizations creating electronic versions of religious texts to contribute them under some suitable license. I would like to see the full spectrum made available, over the last six millenia since the invention of writing, and including the orthodox, the hetorodox, and the heretical. Certainly including the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Vedas, Zoroaster, early Greek, Chinese classical (Confucian, Taoist and other), Jewish, Buddhist, Jain, Roman, Christian, Gnostic, Quran, Popul Vuh, and so on, down to Baha'i texts, The Book of Mormon, Science & Health, atheist writings, and The Book of the SubGenius, all in original languages and modern translations, with dictionaries, concordances, and any other available study aids. Is that diverse enough for you? Anyway, isn't it about time for a new Free/Open religious text of some kind? > > It would be > > far better to set up a non-official Mandrake supporters web site for > > religious software, where the users are responsible for the maintenance > > of a set of RPMs that install correctly on each distribution of Mandrake > > that is released. > > Actually, it's much simpler than that. Such a site would simply > Mandrake-package and provide a URPMI interface for the modules, which could > be done with a script. Having the main package in the distro proper would > help to ensure the uniformity of such content packages. > > Cheers; Leon Certainly there is no reason for such files to be Mandrake-specific. -- Edward Cherlin Generalist & activist--Linux, languages, literacy and more "A knot! Oh, do let me help to undo it!" --Alice in Wonderland
