[Linux4christians] Massachusetts, OpenDocument & The Church

[Michael A. Peters]

On Sun, 2005-10-02 at 03:29 -0400, Stephen Greer wrote:

> Last, does anyone think that the heart of opensource
> is communist?? I read some commentary this last week
> that likened it to that, but I don't think I would
> agree.

The early church as described in Acts was communist - it was a voluntary
communism, but it was a form of communism.

Communism is only bad when it is forced on people by a government.
Voluntary communism, where you can opt in and opt out, is a choice and
an effective way of sharing resources for the common good to achieve a
specific task.

Where I grew up, voluntary communism was used by a lot (not all,
probably less than half) of Filipino families in the Filipino community
- four or five families would pool together any buy a big home, and
share resources while they built their businesses - it was very
effective and those same families now are mostly very well to do (and no
longer living in shared houses).

But no, open source software is not communist.