[vrnut]

The article seems to be lacking a lot of context about several of the projects it addresses... I don't think it makes sense to namedrop TempleOS as the christian version of linux as much as a project that is very influenced by a particular mental illness.

[tessierashpool]

quotes from the TempleOS charter:

* God said 640x480 16 color graphics is a covenant like circumcision.

* God said to use a single audio voice -- a single frequency with waveforms and, maybe, amplitude envelope.

(it's linked in the original, but just in case:

http://www.templeos.org/Wb/Doc/Charter.html

seems he thinks Jesus was a Commodore 64. I'm not into judging people's religions but I will say that's definitely an unusual interpretation of the relevant texts.)

[swasheck]

I can't tell if that's a joke or a legitimately held belief. Reading the rest of the charter (and vaguely from memory), it seems like the developer believed God literally told him about this OS.

Also, the KJV-only perspective is misguided given the textual scholarship that renders KJV as somewhat outdated.

[ggchappell]

Are there good reasons to think that this is supposed to be serious? It all looks very tongue-in-cheek to me.

[zxcvcxz]

>Are there good reasons to thing that this is supposed to be serious?

Yes. The lone author is supposedly schizophrenic.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/gods-lonely-programmer

If this is all just a joke it's a very elaborate one.

[pavel_lishin]

Yeah, I can't wait for some of the more conservative Christians looking to find a "sin-free" operating system to dig around and start reading some of Terry's more... colorful writings.

[humanrebar]

> I can't wait for some of the more conservative Christians looking to find a "sin-free" operating system to dig around and start reading some of Terry's more... colorful writings.

Wait for what? That's more or less me and I've read some of his writings. He looks like a man who struggles with mental illness. What kind of cartoon characters are you imagining people like me behave like?

[pavel_lishin]

He tends to swear a fair amount, and go off on racist tangents. I realize that it's due to his mental illness, but I was just smiling at the disconnect between someone looking for a nice, sin-free operating system coming across a comment like "Fucken nXXXXr. I judge you, pig. I'm fucken Moses. Suck my mother fucken dick."

I'm really sorry if this comes across as making fun of someone's mental illness; that's not my goal.

[humanrebar]

> I'm really sorry if this comes across as making fun of someone's mental illness

On the contrary, I got that point, but it seemed like you expected some sort of Hollywood caricature of how conservative Christians behave. A mature Christian would not be surprised by contradiction or hypocrisy, especially if mental illness is involved. Being a good person is not a requirement to be a Christian. In fact, the people with the most obvious problems tend to be the most eager admit their failings and work on their issues. Christ actually had the harshest things to say to the self-righteous.

In other words, the Westboro fools are pretty much the opposite of how a Christian is taught to be. In fact, I'd be surprised if some of them don't have mental health issues of their own.

I encourage you to read up on Christian theology a bit more, then. And maybe make friends (or a better friends) out of more evangelicals so you can understand them a bit better.

[jahnu]

I once worked for a company where due to a customer's religious sensitivities we had to change the name of a service from 'demon' to 'daemon' and remove an icon featuring a cartoonish devil.

No big deal, just amusing.

[DanBC]

That's a common theme for some of the FreeBSD folks.

Superstitious Users and the FreeBSD Logo: http://halfblog.net/2011/12/04/daemon-worship/

And the HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3310063

[pavel_lishin]

Isn't "daemon" the traditional spelling for those kinds of services, anyway?

[jahnu]

Sure. But I guess that was the joke.

[humanrebar]

> No big deal, just amusing.

Interestingly, there's a passage in the book of Romans about this sort of thing. That's pretty much the right attitude. The relationship with the person is more important than bickering over whether 'demon' is a big deal or not.

[duaneb]

> I don't think it makes sense to namedrop TempleOS as the christian version of linux as much as a project that is very influenced by a particular mental illness.

Especially as a) there is at least one "Christian Linux" distro, and b) TempleOS has very, very little in common with linux. Furthermore, in intent, I think it was very much a "Temple Operating System" and not a suitable comparison to an extremely versatile computational platform.

[vezzy-fnord]

Where was it namedropped as a "Christian version of Linux"? Or are you using Linux as a metonym for any free OS in general, in which case that's just wrong.