I really don't think that the GPL stifles a person's freedom of speech
even if that speech is offensive to some. If there is something about
this that offends you, then you will need to find another peice of
software. Personally I use software that is useful because it is
useful. The fact that some of these programmers might be believing or
doing very offensive things is not going to stop me from using their
software. I use products everyday that are made by people that are in
someway offensive to me. The writer of this program is simply trying to
express his beliefs and his concience. You are free to agree or
disagree with those beliefs. But if simply reading this causes you
pain, you probably need to think the matter over. Either its true or
its not. If its not true, whats the problem? He's not threatening to
do you any harm, only that God will do you harm, but if you don't
believe in God or don't believe that God is the way he describes him, so
what? The fact is that when you actually read the source code, scripts
and documents in open source software, you will find a lot of vulgarity
and distasteful comments. Certainly enough stuff to offend a lot of
people if not everybody. So is the solution to impose censorship and
put a muzzle on people? I can understand the problem if stuff actually
appears on the screen when you run the program, but even then, many
times you can just edit it out so you don't have to live with it on your
machine. We live in a world where people have different values and
express themselves accordingly even in the world of free software. The
last thing that free software needs is a cadre of thought police to
impose political and religeous correctness on everyone. And the biggest
problem with that concept is that eventually the gestapo will end up
knocking on your door as well. So let freedom ring! If it bothers you,
simply ignore it, or don't use the software. And don't worry because
anything that is truly hateful and dangerous will end up being broadly
condemned by the community as a whole, but believe me, this doesn't qualify.
- George Mitchell
G�tz Waschk wrote:
Am Montag, 23. Dezember 2002, 16:43:51 Uhr MET, schrieb Oden Eriksson:
http://freshmeat.net/releases/107382/
I've uploaded this MIDI softsynth. I couldn't test it, because I don't
have the required hardware. But it seems to be really cool.
I don't know if the religious stuff in the docu is GPL compliant,
because it somehow limits the availability of the application. At
least I feel offended by this text:
If you want to use this program to make music that is against God and
Jesus (like HeavyMetal, NewAge,..) STOP and think that you'll be
judged someday by God Himself for causing people to lose the way to
Salvation and go to hell. This will happen, no matter if you'll use my
program, else's program or anything else against Jesus's name.
