On 1/15/06, Shane Hathaway <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Nathan wrote: > > Just out of curiosity, is there a concious reason why the church > > restricts access to the program and it's source, or is that just a > > historical byproduct? I mean, it's obvious that the church can't give > > access to the data these programs use since the data iteself is > > confidential, but what does it have to gain by restricting access to > > the program itself? It seems like the church would naturally be a big > > open-source proponent, as it's not selling its software (as far as I > > know) anyway. > > I think the Church needs to be absolutely sure the membership data is > used the way it was intended to be used. If the source were accessible, > well-meaning but misguided clerks could more easily make mistakes and > leak personal information about members. If the leak were discovered, > people might stop trusting the Church with their personal information, > and might even sue the Church, reducing the Church's ability to fulfill > its mission to perfect the saints. Thus any software that has access to > private membership information is probably not a good candidate to > release as open source software. > > However, the Church currently seems optimistic about open source > software for most other work. Unfortunately, lots of Church software is > already tied to proprietary agreements. In practice, building software > to be released as open source software requires a committment to open > source right from the start of the project. > > Shane
Good reasoning. That makes sense. ~ Nathan _______________________________________________ Ldsoss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ldsoss.org/mailman/listinfo/ldsoss
