Talk:Open-source religion

message: Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. As such it specifies that the articles here must simply report on accepted knowledge, rather than initiate new knowledge and definitions. These articles must also be from a neutral point of view and supported by reference.
In this case all religious groups calling themselves open source should be reported upon and any conclusions based upon the nature of these groups should only be reported when they have been made in sources other than Wikipedia. To define what open source religion should be, then only report upon those religious groups who fit into that definition would be to go against the policies set out by Wikipedia and to restrict greater knowledge of this field.
Kriegman again responds to  203.113.193.101 (9/12/05):
I must say that I find it to be a fantastic claim that what people call themselves is in fact the case and must be reported as so.  One might be able to make the case that we should describe what people claim to be.  The fact that they make a claim may be true without the content of the claim having any validity.  For example, some developers of Intelligent Design theory claim that it is science.  While the absurd claim could be part of a description of an article on Intelligent Design---i.e., the fact that some of its developers make that claim---it would be absurd to report that "ID is a scientific theory that ..."
And I was not "defining what open source should be."  I was using the definition that has been developed through actual usage of the term.  See my response to 203.113.193.101, above, where I went through the definition that had been independently presented in Wikipedia.
*I must say that I find it to be a fantastic claim that what people call themselves is in fact the case and must be reported as so. I didn't read it that way; I read it as more like "religions that refer to themselves as open source should be referred to here in some way"... which by extension would also mean "and then briefly elaborated on, including whether or not the religion does in fact appear to meet the requirements for an 'open source' religion". Similar to how Mormons aren't considered "Christians" by a large number of people professing to be Christians, but consider themselves to be a Christian sect; you'd want to mention both sides of the disagreement or illogical bits when referencing them, but you couldn't really leave them completely out of articles on Christianity as a whole. By the way, please sign your posts at the BOTTOM of said post, as tis' a little less confusing, OK? Runa27 22:51, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Edit of links to Wicca, ULC, and Principia Discordia 

message: To: Dan Kriegman
Some links have been made at the bottom of the page to the handful of other religions that have also taken on the moniker of "open source". I did not change your article. I simply wish to open the discussion by adding a few links to other religions who have either explicitly linked themselves to open source or appear to have independently developed a similar ethic. Reading those links does not constitute a significant understanding of those religions in order to make a judgement as to whether they should be allowed to call themselves "open source", but it does initiate possible enquiry. It is the policy of Wikipedia that articles be collaboratively developed. I do not believe that you are allowing for collaboration in this case.
Articles have to begin somewhere. So, it is acceptable to simply initiate a page provided you are willing to allow others to work upon it. At this stage the Open Source Religion page has some serious flaws.
* This page is not from a Neutral Point of View
Wikipedia insists that articles in its encyclopedia be from a neutral viewpoint.
You are the founder of Yoism. An article from the Boston Globe  reporting this is found on your own site []
The article you have written here only speaks specifically about Yoism, and only quotes from Yoist sources that you created. Douglas Rushkoff's Open Source Judaism has been reported upon in numerous news sources. It should have been discussed within this article. 
* This page appears to be original research
No articles from peer reviewed journals or books by recognised experts are referred to concerning the phenomenon of open source religion. This appears to be the first such article on this subject, and its purpose seems to be one of validating and promoting the article writer's specific religion.
* This article is unverifiable
Sweeping statements are made about both religion in general and open source religion specifically without any independent verification by reference to respected academics, books or journals. Where are the quotes from or references to peer-reviewed academic journals such as Parabola, The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, Numen, and more?
My sense is that at this stage unless a more neutral position is taken on describing Open Source Religion, the information on this page is too obscure to warrant a place within the Wikipedia.
Eriostemon 02:45, 14 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links Edit 

message: I did some work on this, sounds like a personal essay at times, which I couldn't think a way out of. I constructed an introduction for readers new to the topic, but I feel this still needs some work. 82.25.75.242 00:04, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit

message: If people are uncomfortable with the NPOV of the article, why not simply edit it? Why waste so much time in talk mode?
At what point are new phenomena worth reporting on? It seems clear, from the external links, that Open Source Religions have emerged on the scene, an article reporting this factually is a valuable contribution to an encyclopedia of human knowledge.
For clarity's sake it makes sense to report those religions which explictly call themselves Open Source. Religions that have aspects of open source could be mentioned in the article as historical precursors to the phenomena of OSR -- but as Kriegman points out they don't contain all the elements. It does the reader a disservice to bundle them into a list of open source religions.
-Orion OrionK 14:03, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original Research & New Phenomena 

message: The article has had numerous external references added since the OR tag was added.  While still in need of further development, it seems like the OR tag should be removed.  Unless there is an objection, I will remove the tag in a few days after there has been some time for discussion.  Kriegman 03:06, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removing the Original Research tag

message: I noted this reference, which see Principia Discordia as an early example of the open source movement - not just of open source religion:
"Discordianism and the concept of KopyLeft go hand in hand. Although just a small part of the counter-culture gestalt, I believe that the Principia Discordia was probably one of the earliest expressions and strongest champions of this idea, which has since seen such concepts as the "Open Source Software" initiative, with endeavours such as the Linux Operating System."
(Swabey, 2002)
http://www.lazaruscorporation.co.uk/v4/articles/principiadiscordia.php
-- Beardo 13:27, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Principia Discordia 

message: It is not enough to list references at the bottom of the page, just because these mention this subject or dicuss it. We need inline citations for the material in this article. See WP:CITE#How_and_where_to_cite_sources ≈ jossi ≈  t • @ 20:38, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: This article is really about "Yoism". Moved. ≈ jossi ≈  t • @ 20:47, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moved to Yoism 

message: Not knowing the history of the two pages, Jossi redirected this page to a Yoism article that he created from this page.  The Yoism article was thenb deleted by someone and the redirect from this article then went nowhere.  The Yoism article is protected to prevent any editing of it, so the only thing I could do was recreate this page.  Kriegman 12:14, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry, this is not the way to avoid page protection,. The reason for the move is that this article is about somthing called "Yoism" and not about someting called "Open source religion", as there are no other known examples of that type of "religion". ≈ jossi ≈  t • @ 14:47, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Page destroyed and recreated 

message: Yo Mattisse, you wrote "This is Kriegman at work again . . ."  Please note that Goethean removed all of my unreferenced/unsupported material from this article, cutting it down to almost a stub.  While it is true that I then made five edits, not one changed the content or made any significant modifications to Goethean's editing.  All of my recent edits were either minor (grammar) or supplemented Goethean's edits by finding the missing links he referred to.  That's all I did.  While I believe that after Goethean's edits, the article is now well referenced with no claims that are not supported by reputable external sources, I think—and if you take another look, you might agree—that it would be unfair to characterize my recent input as "This is Kriegman at work again . . ." with the implication that my current editing input is the same as earlier work on this (or other) articles.  With these thoughts in mind, would you be willing to take another look and reconsider your view of my input into this article? Kriegman 12:37, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Note to Mattisse 

message: Mattisse wrote:
:That does seem much clearer and better referenced. I haven't finished checking the whole article out yet -- but your second footnote doesn't work. Since it is a Boston Globe article, maybe you can get it directly from them. Some articles they leave up forever.  Mattisse 13:32, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Broken link to Boston Globe article 

message: At one point the references were actually to be found at the end of this article, and the links to them worked. What happened? Why don't the links work any more? OrionK 14:48, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That happens when a closing ref tag is left off. It's been fixed. :-) —Hanuman Das 02:00, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  REFERENCES 

message: Open source has different aspects to it, only one of which is that the content is freely available.  By that definition, anything that has entered the public domain, e.g., the collected works of Shakespeare or Charles Dickens, are all "open source."  However, while that is an aspect of open source, that is not what open source means, i.e., it does not mean uncopyrighted.  Anyone can modify Shakespeare's words and publish them.  But if a GROUP of people were doing a systematic modification and had a system for COLLECTIVE participation and the original work and any product produced from the collective effort were FREELY available, THEN the collaborative revision could be seen as an open source revision of Shakespeare.
 
While freedom to use and revise the content is ONE aspect of open source works, what makes a software project like Linux, Apache, or a text compilation product, like Wikipedia, "open source" is a system for collective modification and revision of a single product. Discordianism---which to many people is a tongue-in-cheek "religion"---hardly has such a system as Discordians are noted for their individuality and non-adherence to any rule structure.
: First, please sign your comments - reading a talk page like this and running into the same argument being made for the, what, fourth time, but unsigned, makes it look worse than sock puppetry.  I would, however, like to comment that the Open Source definitions, while fairly acceptable I suppose, seem to fail to address some aspects of Discordianism.  For example, it would seem to be a fairly strong tenet of Discordianism that disagreement, not agreement, is the marker of high quality contributions.  Does that make it not OS, or just part of a larger set of endeavors, of which OS is a narrower, more specific kind?
: Anyway, my thought on the article?  Keep it short until there is something interesting to report, in the real world. human 04:37, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discordianism is not an example of an Open Source Religion 

message: The following was just added to the article. I moved it here. It suggests a need for an entirely different article, about software as religion:
Open source is not the only software related religion: it is possible to find references, stating that Apple has one, so does the Java community, Oracle, IBM and GoogleWhy Doesn't Microsoft Have A Cult Religion?  (Microsoft seems not having any).
Thoughts, anyone?
--Orlady (talk) 17:08, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, if not to look that way, I would consider this article a vanity page. Where is the prayer, where is the ritual, where are the religious laws? Do you treat programming, beer events and coding style rules as these? There are no any talks in the official GNU, Linux kernel or Apache pages where they would say they have they own religion. If any projects that do this ever existed they likely make an absolute minority and do not deserve the separate article at all. We can only talk about the Open Source religion if we use this word is in some much wider sense - this is how I was understanding this in the beginning. Then the Apple, Oracle, IBM and Google religions are equally relevant and largely the same thing. I agree that it would make sense to write a combined article. Audriusa (talk) 17:50, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't believe you have read the article. This article is NOT about a cult religion focused on open source software. Rather, it is about the use of open source methodologies in the creation and development of religious belief systems. --Orlady (talk) 18:34, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I did. Open Source in a large scale have never associated itself with any kind of a religion and does not have the necessary attributes to qualify itself as religion. If anybody does, this is such a minority that the article should not be notable. Your several listed strange communities mean very little in comparison the official position of Apache, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems or Novell Audriusa (talk) 06:54, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: To repeat the point in a different form: The use of the term "open source" in this article has almost nothing to do with software. [Please don't look at me to explain this concept in detail. I have this article on my watchlist, but as with most of what's on my watchlist, I have no personal involvement with the topic.] --Orlady (talk) 14:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You asked me not to, so I do not do... STFW about the meaning of the Open source at least in Wikipedia. Audriusa (talk) 19:04, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Alternative meaning of "Open source religion"

message: As of 24 March 2008, there are 20,600 Google matches for "open source religion", including referenced articles in Boston Globe, Wired, Discover, and others. Just what would make this topic fail to meet general notability guidelines? I say that's because the concept is under attack by most other factions (with hubris like "our way is the only way"). Here are some links...
* http://zero.newassignment.net/assignmentzero/open_source_religion
* http://www.spiritscholars.org/my_weblog/2007/05/our_story_thus_.html
* http://infao5501.ag5.mpi-sb.mpg.de:8080/topx/archive?link=Wikipedia-Lip6-2/1452786.xml&style
* http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=319630
* http://digg.com/linux_unix/Open_Source_Religion_?t=1746657
* http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/229
* http://www.yoism.org/?q=node/39
* http://www.churchofreality.org/wisdom/terminology/terminology/open_source_religion.html
* http://www.linux.com/articles/54246
* http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/07/open_source_religion
* http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1850
* http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.recovery.aa/msg/0747e6b2668e172b
* http://www.preachingtoday.com/illustrations/article_print.html?id=38203
-- 99.231.208.23 (talk) 18:47, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  general notability attacks 

message: Doesn't this come very parallel to the conception that many have used, without/prior-to using computer terminology, when they say they are "spiritual" but not "religious"? I thought *religion* intrinsically was a particular set of spiritual mores? Has any comment on this subject been attested to from that angle? 4.255.48.245 (talk) 23:13, 1 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: It's more about the idea of a church--a central authority on a religion, which these lack. Compare Buddhism with Christianity24.22.117.251 (talk) 07:26, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Spiritual but not religious"? 

message: I deleted a reference with a broken link to the Open Source Yoga Consortium. Maybe there should be a mention of the Yoga Unity project instead? Aharonium (talk) 04:46, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a new paragraph providing some relevant information on the work of Open Source Yoga Unity under the section on Open-Source in Established Religions and Spiritual Practices.Aharonium (talk) 18:52, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Defunct Open Source Yoga Consortium 

message: I added a section describing new directions in Open Source Judaism marking, I hope, some differences between how these open source projects in Judaism see their work in contrast to what Rushkoff articulated for the movement. In doing so I began to wonder whether there aren't certain basic distinctions to make in how Open Source Religions and/or Open Source Religious projects understand themselves. On the one hand, I'm seeing movements to evolve religious ideology, belief, and practice in terms of a shared dogma or doctrine among a community of participants. On the other, I'm seeing projects that use open source licensing to preserve creative content from monopolistic control in an era of copyright. Rushkoff's formulation is obviously in the former camp. Newer projects in Open Source Judaism (including the one I direct, the Open Siddur Project) are in the latter. I can see where these objectives might overlap but they are also quite distinct, and perhaps the entire page reorganized to helpfully describe these sometimes complementary differences. Aharonium (talk) 04:46, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Complementary differences between Open Source Religions and Religious Projects 

message: While in some ways, Unitarianism does have a lot of openness that is somewhat similar to OSR, liberal, modifiable religious systems are not what is meant by open source religion using the modern invention of open source systems for developing various meme systems, software projects, etc.  Almost all religions have changed over time yet religious belief systems are typically the antithesis of open source.  Liberal religious belief systems (as opposed to fundamentalist) tend to be more open.  Yet, standard religious belief systems are not meant to be modifiable by a group process coordinated in some technical way.  OSR represents something new; systems of belief that are fundamentally meant to be modifiable, i.e., the modifiable aspect of the system is central to the set of beliefs and there is a process and a system for modifying the beliefs and coming to agreement, a process that is similar to what we see in the Wikipedia and software projects like Linux.  
We may need a paragraph or two on this page to differentiate liberal religious trends that are more open to change and modification from fundamentalist religious belief systems.  Then we could locate such liberal and more open systems as lying somewhere between fundamentalist religious systems and intentionally designed OS religious systems.  But throwing in any liberal religious belief system as an example of OSR muddies the concept. Kriegman (talk) 20:38, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Since open-source principles can be found as antecedents in many organizations including religious ones, I think it's fair to mention those aspects as antecedents, whether or not there are active open-source efforts within a particular established religion, sect, movement, or denomination. I agree with your sentiment that open-source religions represents something new, at least as a licensing strategy for operating something collective under the aegis of copyright law. It's important to be intellectually honest concerning what aspects of open-source are anathema and opposite to strategies for the preservation of lineages long adopted within established traditions. To do otherwise, is to invite the term's adoption by adherents seeking attractive buzzwords by which to advertise their tradition. I do think it might be helpful to think of the term 'open-source religion' as a descriptive term for those employing open-source methods for collaborative work on or within religion, rather than as an an entirely new entity. I think the article could only be enriched by examples of open-source principles shared by established religions without necessitating that those religions be themselves an 'open-source religion.' Aharonium (talk) 19:52, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unitarianism 

message: Right now the organization of the article follows a loose chronology presenting examples of open-source religion without much flow or integration indicating how these examples relate to one another. To me, it seems like all these examples can be reorganized into at least two sections: 
1) new open-source religions that are openly syncretist, e.g. Yoism and Sidian Jones's project, and  
 
2) open-source initiatives working within existing religious traditions, e.g. Open Source Yoga Unity, Douglas Rushkoff's "Open Source Judaism," and open-source projects like the Open Siddur Project. 
It seems to me there's also a possible subsection to #2. This section 2.1 would distinguish between 
a) the use of open-source as a democratic method for the popular reform of religious practice, and 
b) the use of Open Content licenses as a tool for maintaining shared and adaptive use of content. This includes content already in the Public Domain but undergoing digitization, as well as newly created content under copyright but intended for improvement and adaptation by others for various reasons (e.g. as part of an online user-generated content project).
To my mind, there's an inter-relationship between a and b -- keeping content open for potentially adaptive reuse aids the explicit intentions of reformers to innovate in practice. It's just that projects sharing content through open-source methods are not necessarily interested in reform. 
I hope this re-organization helps everyone who feels invested and interested in this subject and this page. I'm going to do some edits to elicit any constructive comments or outright objections.
Aharonium (talk) 17:15, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I've completed my reorganization. While going through the article I also made a number of edits to improve the clarity and flow of the existing writing. I hope this is agreeable to everyone. To improve the article, I do believe that the citations and references need to be rechecked, broken links repaired if possible (use Archive.org's wayback machine if necessary), and other examples included. An obvious deficit in the article is published analysis on the topic of open-source religion. For those interested, a literature review of academic articles, masters theses, and dissertations published seems to be in order. Aharonium (talk) 19:00, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I've checked all the links and removed mention of defunct project whose associated links cannot even be verified by Archive.org's wayback machine. Aharonium (talk) 20:37, 22 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re-organization of article into sections 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just added archive links to  on Open-source religion. Please take a moment to review my edit. You may add  after the link to keep me from modifying it, if I keep adding bad data, but formatting bugs should be reported instead. Alternatively, you can add  to keep me off the page altogether, but should be used as a last resort. I made the following changes:
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://zero.newassignment.net/assignmentzero/open_source_religion
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.ozacua.com/
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://varady.net/open_siddur/
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.g4tv.com/screensavers/features/44075/OpenSource_Religion.html
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://www.ning.com/blog/2008/05/religion-20-redefining-god.html
*Attempted to fix sourcing for http://sil.mcmaster.ca/Archive/life/041125lifefeature.html
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—cyberbot IITalk to my owner:Online 12:40, 31 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I know this is blasphemous and heretical to the Wikipedia's closed mind about Hinduism, what with caste system, untouchability, Hindutva terror and whatnot, so it will be promptly be termed fascist revisionism etc., but so be it. The reason Hinduism has survived so long is its adaptability and flexibility. Like open-source software, it provides a structure, but the practitioner is free to take or discard whatever he wishes, and free to adapt or modify it for specific conditions. Even the Wall Street Journal concurs.https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-hinduism-has-persisted-for-4-000-years-11547770953 (Opinion piece by Shashi Tharoor). Sooku (talk) 18:12, 10 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hinduism, the original open source religion?