Ecuador’s Salesians promote free software

Michel Brauwens translates Marco Fioretti’s experience of the Salesian Polytechnic Uninersity’s Congress on Free Software. Arguing that free software is not just a technological ideal, it is a social ideal that necessarily has theological implications:

The third day’s conference was from Fr Julian Fox: Rights and equity in the democratic building of knowledge“. While criticizing some positions and attitudes of both the FSF and OSI, Fr Julian explained why it’s important for Salesians, and Catholics in general, to finally develop a t[h]eology of technology in the path laid by the Church’s social doctrine, in order to make of technology a real enabler of common good.

Link.

Quitting the clergy and quitting IT

Both Catholic and Protestant churches in the US have clergy problems. There isn’t enough clergypower to serve congregations in the traditional manner. Much effort has been put into recruiting Catholic priests and Protestant clergy. One correlating problem is the rate with which current clergy are leaving being Holy Orders and pursuing secular careers. Again, it’s a phenomenon that hits Catholics and mainline Protestants equally.

Hopefully, the problem can be treated by not staying parochial and looking at this as a “church problem” only. Last week’s Network World article, “Young IT workers disillusioned, hard to hold, survey says,” brings up the correlated problem in the information technology industry. Managers don’t seem to understand their new recruits, and vice versa. Perhaps the most can be learned by reading the article, written from a managerial perspective, and by reading comments on the article, largely written from the employee perspective.

IT managers want to tell young IT professionals to suck it up and take little pay for hard work (see article). Clergy are often met with the presumption that we all have the Franciscan charism to accept no compensation for our work (while remaining “relevant” to the broader culture).

Similarly, the military is seeing an outflow of young officers, from at least one perspective.