Re: Church opensource.

[Patrick Dunford]

Jim Cheetham wrote:

On Thu, 2004-02-26 at 10:04, Patrick Dunford wrote:
 

The reason why cost saving is not a big deal is that most people I know 
in church circles aren't that tight.
   

Although in practice that's a fine answer, and it's quite likely the
right answer for you, there's a fine line between having plenty of money
to adress a problem with, and wasting money.
<rant temperature="solar">
<disclaimer>
Please don't attack this argument *personally*, this is an impersonal
rant ... no _specific_ offence intended. Although it is offensive. I
don't have anything against organised churches.
</disclaimer>
Wasting money is a moral crime. If your church has excess cash, I
presume it spends it on doing good for the community. The more excess it
has, the more it can spend on doing good. Therefore the less it has, the
less good it can do. Therefore the choice of Microsoft/commercial
software as opposed to equivalent[1] OOS is a choice to do less good,
which is evil.
 

We chose to purchase and install a top rated commercial package that was 
more expensive than powerpoint, on the grounds it was a lot better as 
well and a whole lot easier for our operators to use. Was that therefore 
automatically the wrong decision? I don't buy that line. I don't buy any 
line that says that if you don't support OSS, it must automatically be 
evil. The people that write OSS are for the most part doing so in their 
free time. During the day they write commercial software and get paid 
for it from the sales of their commercial product. Or their OSS product 
is a limited version of a commercial product that they make money off.

Buying a computer and software on it to use in your services is part of 
the good things your church does. It's used to worship God, which is the 
most important thing that your church does.

The same argument should be used of government, of course, replacing
"good/evil" with "providing services to the population/increasing the
profits of already-rich influential people".
 

Is this a political group now? I could respond to your POV, but I doubt 
that the rest of the people here would appreciate it.