“Freedom Software” versus “Free Software”
“‘Tis but thy name that is my enemy; …O, be some other name! What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” – Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet Perhaps the most frustrating thing for me as an advocate for the use of Free(dom) software in the church [...]
Why Open Source Software is like Church Coffee Beans
No organization in the United States has a stronger incentive for using open source software than the Church. “The Church is always asking for money!” – Everyone. In a way, that’s right; the church is always in need of money. Money for ministry, outreach, and evangelism. Money for books and materials. Money to pay salaries [...]
Three steps to Open Source in the Church
The history and legacy of the Church in the late 1990s and 2000s will be lost in 10 years because we will lack the software to open its’ data. Check out this Microsoft KB article. It describes a (very complicated, very technical) process for reconfiguring your computer after Office 2003 Service Pack 3 quietly disables [...]
The Value of Community, or Why I Love Perl
I’ve been asked a number of times recently why I chose to use Perl to develop SAGrader, my company’s flagship essay grading product. I’ll be the first to admit that Perl tends to permit bad (unreadable, unmaintainable, overly terse) code in more ways then, say, Java. I think that those problems are mitigated by keeping [...]