Open-source religion

New open-source religions may develop their rituals, praxes, or systems of beliefs through a continuous process of refinement and dialogue among participating practitioners.

[2] 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.

"[6][7] 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 (2003), where he offered the following description as an introduction to Open Source Judaism: 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 (1970), "Ⓚ ALL RIGHTS REVERSED – Reprint what you like."

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 (founding director of the Open Siddur Project) 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.

[15] 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.

In August 2002, Aharon Varady proposed the formation of an "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 (Jewish prayer books).

"[19] The 2003 publication of Rushkoff's book Nothing Sacred: The Truth about Judaism[20] 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.

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.

The organization provides a common voice, and the pooling of resources, to legally resist the application of a proprietary Copyright to any Yoga style thereby "ensuring its continued natural unfettered practice for all to enjoy and develop."

The work, a collection of "the original foundation documents of Wicca" authored between 1949 and 1961, was published digitally and in print under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Open Soul Holy Scripture of Human Worship is word of God, common heritage of Humankind, published anonymously, free for copying".