Four years ago, I received concerns via private e-mail about religious views in free software projects and posted a statement about it on social media. Given it’s more relevant than ever, I’d like to share it again on my blog.
Everyone is free to live his life with his own beliefs, religious views, politicical positions, his own confession – all as long as no one else is hurt by that.
Open source communities as I know and love them are an open, inclusive, friendly environment, with a worldwide community. We not only break the limits of time zones or languages, but also the differences between several cultures – which is not easy, but very well worth the effort, as it yields to a friendly and exciting new working environment all over the world.
When working in such a project, one of the most important values is being tolerant and interested towards others. Even if you don’t share their beliefs, respecting them and trying to understand them is a sign of strength and maturity – and by being open and interested, you can learn a lot, widen your own view and enrich your own life to a point you maybe never would have expected.
I remember that some years ago, a religious group asked me whether I could “dedicate” my open source work to them. By dedicating, they didn’t mean any public statement, nor any legal act whatsoever, but only the mental expression of “giving”. They, so I was told, are not allowed to use certain things without an explicit dedication. As strange as that sounded to my ears, it was something that didn’t hurt me, but rather the contrary. Of course, I gave that dedication and seeing them happy with this made me happy – independent from my own views and beliefs. I probably only understand half of what was going on and what it meant for them, but it felt good. Really good. And it felt right.
If we look at the intention of people active in religious communities, they are to me not that much different to those of many active in open source communities – even if the spiritual background might be completely different or absent. Working together, giving, sharing, learning, being inclusive – all these terms I would attribute to religion are also core values of many open source projects. With that aligned, it should not matter what or if someone beliefes in as a religion, as at the end of the day, those working in free software communities all have the same goal, so there’s nothing to be scared about.
People are different, especially when they come from different cultures – but that makes them neither good or bad, but just that: different from what you know. Something that should not make you scared, but interested, open, welcoming.
For many religions, if you look at the present or the past, horrible things happened in their name and sometimes, sadly still happen. To me, that’s not what religion is about and in my opinion all that has nothing to do with the core intention of religion. Rather the contrary, it is abusing religion for purposes it was never meant to be, and we should not identify any religion with this per se.
True open source communities respect every member, independent of culture, religion, politics, language or country – and by being that open, there you do not only find colleagues, but true friends around the world.
I wish for you that you can see things the same way. I can for sure tell you it will enrich your life.
One of the things that inspired me most during my work in free software the last years was a meeting of our native-language community during a conference. We spent a considerable amount of time and money to get people there – helping with visa invitations, guiding them how to best book their trip and all that. It was a huge load of work and took considerable efforts to make it happen, but it was so very well worth it.
In the end, dozens of contributors from all around the globe were in one room. Some fluent in English and comfortable with communicating, others more shy and dealing with the language barrier. Some very young, others much older.
Seeing the eyes of all those people, after all the efforts we put into getting them there, that just made me so incredibly happy. Looking in their happy eyes was one of the most beautiful moments I ever experienced in my open source activities so far. They were thankful of being there, some of them had left their continent for the first time ever. They were glad to meet other contributors with whom they’ve been working over years but never met in person.
We had lots of good meetings and talks at that conference, but this particular gathering to me was the major event at that conference, it outlined everything that open source thinking is all about to me. Nobody cared about religion, age, gender, political views. Friends were together, overcame language barriers, time zones and jetlag. I remember well how honoured and proud I felt of having had a chance to meet all those people, in a friendly, inviting and inclusive environment, leaving out all clichés and bias.
Damit du nicht der einzige bist, der dich kommentiert …^^
Wenn es so stimmt, dann würde der Soziologie in mir wissen wollen, wie sich dann das soziale Gefüge konstituiert. Ich würde erwarten, dass Hierarchien dann subtiler verhandelt werden. Aber schon die unterschiedlichen Sprachkenntnisse schaffen gesellschaftliche Differenzen, die Teilhabechancen erhöhen oder verringern.
Ich finde es gut, wenn Leute daran arbeiten, die Bedeutung von Geschlecht, Herkunft etc. zu reduzieren, aber so schnell geht das nicht, weil – wenn man ehrlich ist – keiner wirklich neutral ist in den Fragen, da er/sie eine biografische Prägung dazu hat.
I can’t give you more details, as I am no expert in that field – however, from what I’ve seen, everyone was at a very comparable level, friends were together, working on one common goal. It was simply amazing. :-)