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FreeBSD 5.3 on the Horizon
underpar writes "ZDNet UK is reporting that FreeBSD is nearing a code freeze. August 15th is the deadline which will be followed by the usual beta testing and a final release hoped for by October 1st. ZDNet interviewed the software engineer leading the release work, Scott Long, for the article. He says: 'The 5.3 release will be the first one where we see the real benefits of that. The multithreaded network stack will outperform everything we've done before, for running applications such as Apache or MySQL.' Status reports can be found on the FreeBSD website." I've been using the last technology release of FreeBSD for some time now, and am really looking forward to the 5.3 release, as well as the 5-STABLE branch that's rumored to follow soon after.
As a life-long practicing Christian, active in my local church, with many practicing Christian friends, I just can not in good conscience use an operating system that uses an image of Satan as its mascot.
Context is everything. The BSD "daemon" is in no way supposed to lead people in worship or in any other way lead people to violate commandment #1. In fact, as an open source project, I feel that projects such as FreeBSD and Linux best represent the kind of software development the Acts early church of the Apostles would do: communal. Honsetly, it is not menat the celebrate satan or represent some sort of mystic iconography.
Microsoft, on the other hand (which you currently use in favor of BSD), is a perfect example of immoral greed (if you mods disagree; fine. I'm just calling it how it looks from here), which I find much more morally reprehensible than a cartoon devil; because unlike the cartoon, it is real.
So, as a recent convert to Christianity, I find a great moral symbol in the fact that I run 100% open source at home, as opposed to corporate mammon.