Open-source religion
Open-source religions employ open-source methods for the sharing, construction, and adaptation of religious belief systems, content, and practice. In comparison to religions utilizing proprietary, authoritarian, hierarchical, and change-resistant structures, open-source religions emphasize sharing in a cultural Commons, participation, self-determination, decentralization, and evolution. They apply principles used in organizing communities developing open-source software for organizing group efforts innovating with human culture. New open-source religions may develop their rituals, praxes, or systems of beliefs through a continuous process of refinement and dialogue among participating practitioners. Organizers and participants often see themselves as part of a more generalized [free culture movement|open-source and free-culture movement].
Origin
In 1994, with his essay, "The Holy War: Mac vs. DOS," the scholar and novelist Umberto Eco popularized the use of religious metaphors in comparing operating system design and user experience. By the late 1990s, the term "open-source religion" began appearing in technology magazines as a reference to the open-source Linux operating system's organizing principle and as an analogy for highlighting the philosophical differences between advocates of open-source vs. proprietary software. In 2001, Daniel Kriegman began describing a religion he invented called Ozacua as "the world's first opensource religion." The concept of an "open source religion" was further expanded upon by the media theorist, Douglas Rushkoff in his book, Nothing's Sacred: The Truth about Judaism, where he offered the following description as an introduction to Open Source Judaism:Discordianism, Copyleft, and open-source software
Before the coinage of the term open-source in 1998 or even the birth of the Free Software movement, the Principia Discordia, a Discordian religious text written by Greg Hill with Kerry Wendell Thornley, included the following Copyright disclaimer in its 4th edition, "Ⓚ ALL RIGHTS REVERSED – Reprint what you like." By the summer of 1970, the implications of the disclaimer were being discussed in other underground publications.Via the counterculture, by the mid-1970s, the concept had influenced a generation of Discordians including the nascent hacker culture. The project to create Tiny BASIC was proposed in Bob Albrecht and Dennis Allison's Dr. Dobb's Journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia, a journal of the Homebrew Computer Club, a small group of computer hobbyists who began meeting in 1975 around Silicon Valley. The first lines of the source code for Tiny Basic as released in 1976 by Li-Chen Wang stated ‘ COPYLEFT ALL WRONGS RESERVED’. In 1984–5 programmer Don Hopkins sent Richard Stallman a letter labeled "Copyleft—all rights reversed". Stallman chose the phrase to identify his free software method of distribution. The relationship between Discordianism and "Kopyleft" remain part of the culture of Discordianism, as explained by the Discordian Rev. Dr. Jon Swabey in his ''Apocrypha Discordia.''
Open-source in established religious traditions
For established traditions whose canonical works, records of discourse, and inspired artworks reside in the public domain, keeping these works open and available in the face of proprietary interests has inspired several open-source initiatives. Open access to resources and adaptive reuse of shared materials under open content licensing provide a structure by which communities can innovate new religious systems collaboratively under the aegis of copyright law. For some religious movements, however, public access and literacy, and the potential of adaptive reuse also provide an opportunity for innovation and reform within established traditions. In an interview by Alan Jacobs in The Atlantic magazine on open-source religion, Aharon Varady explained that "cultures breathe creativity like we breathe oxygen" arguing that open-source provides one possible strategy for keeping a tradition vibrant while also preserving historical works as non-proprietary during a period of transition from analog to digital media.Open-source Judaism
Although a work of radical 1960s Jewish counterculture rather than an explicitly religious work, the satirical songbook Listen to the mocking bird by the Fugs' Naphtali "Tuli" Kupferberg contains the earliest explicit mention of "copyleft" in a copyright disclaimer. Later open-source efforts in Judaism begin to appear in 1988 with the free software code written for calculating the Hebrew calendar included in Emacs. After the popularization of the term "open-source" in 1998, essays and manifestos linking open-source and Judaism began appearing in 2002 among Jewish thinkers familiar with trends in new media and open-source software. In August 2002, Aharon Varady proposed the formation of an "Open [Siddur Project|Open Siddur]," an open-source licensed user-generated content project for digitizing liturgical materials and writing the code needed for the web-to-print publishing of Siddurim. Meanwhile, media theorist Douglas Rushkoff began articulating his understanding of open-source in Judaism. "The object of the game, for me," Rushkoff explained, "was to recontextualize Judaism as an entirely Open Source proposition."The term "Open Source Judaism" first appeared in Douglas Rushkoff's book Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism. Rushkoff employed the term "Open Source" to describe a democratic organizational model for collaborating in a commonly held source: the Hebrew Bible and other essential works of Rabbinic Judaism. Rushkoff conceived of Judaism as essentially an open-source religion which he conceived as, "the contention that religion is not a pre-existing truth but an ongoing project. It may be divinely inspired, but it is a creation of human beings working together. A collaboration." For Rushkoff, open-source offered the promise of enacting change through a new culture of collaboration and improved access to sources. "Anyone who wants to do Judaism should have access to Judaism. Judaism is not just something that you do, it's something you enact. You've got to learn the code in order to alter it." The 2003 publication of Rushkoff's book Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism and an online forum dedicated to "Open Source Judaism" inspired several online projects in creating web applications for generating custom made haggadot for Passover, however neither content nor code for these were shared under free-culture compatible open content terms.
Beginning with the Open Siddur Project in 2009, open-source projects in Judaism began to publicly share their software code with open-source licenses and their content with free-culture compatible open content licenses. The explicit objectives of these projects also began to differ from Rushkoff's "Open Source Judaism." Rather than seek reforms in religious practices or doctrines, these projects used Open Content licenses to empower users to access and create their own resources from a common store of canonical texts and associated translations and metadata. By 2012, open-source projects in Judaism were mainly active in facilitating collaboration in sharing resources for transcribing and translating existing works in the Public Domain, and for adaptation and dissemination of works being shared by copyright owners under Open Content licenses.