Re: Free software movement similar to Islam?

[John Baker]

On 21 Oct 2005 06:33:44 -0700, harddrivecleaner@yahoo.com wrote:

>Some similarities:
>
>1. decentralized : there is no one Pope for either,
>  although there are certainly Ayatollah wannabes in OSS
>  like RMS.
>
>2. imperialistic : just as muslim armies once attacked country
>  after country, and today there is a "reverse crusade" & jihad
>  happening, OSS is entering almost every area of software use
>  and many OSS partisans are going to an extra effort to
>  impose free software on their organizations, families, etc.
>
>3. no dissent allowed : just as muslims feel compelled
>  to attack anyone who speaks blasphemy, such as Salman Rushdie
>  who merely points out that the koran is merely a historical
>  document (therefore he must be killed), so alas OSS
>  supporters become very angry when any dissenter speaks
>  their mind.
>
>4. destructive : OSS radicals want to get rid of even
>  the copyright, and the GPL is written to strip software writers
>  of their rights over their work (read it...); similarly
>  muslim radicals want to rid the world of non-muslim people
>  and impose taxes and prison time or worse on non-muslims.
>
>And surely there are more similarities.
>
>This isn't to say that free software is all wrong,
>but it is better to know and think about the movement
>and whether it is going in the right direction
>than to let it become evil, like islam. The copyright
>for instance is so basic, to remove it would be so radical
>as to be insane.

My biggest bitch with open source software is simply that most of it
just isn't very good. 

But I guarantee you're going to get a lot of flames from the OS crowd.
<G>