Hacker Religion
From A Portrait of J. Random Hacker:

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Religion

Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very commonly, three or more of these are combined in the same person. Conventional faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown.

Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all forms of religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy parody religions such as Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius.

Also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by Zen Buddhism or (less commonly) Taoism, and blend them easily with their native religions.

There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility that shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen. Hacker folklore that pays homage to wizards and speaks of incantations and demons has too much psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke.

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Then again, there is a Christian Hackers' Association:

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Our purpose is twofold: First, to organize Christian hackers together into a community for fellowship, prayer, and discussion of the practical and theological implications of Jesus' teachings as they relate to hacking. Secondly, to act as a witness of the good news of Jesus Christ to the hacker underground so that some might be saved by God's grace and mercy.

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And, there are claims of a Christian operating system:

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What is Jesux?

Jesux (pronounced Hay-sooks) is a new Linux distribution for Christian hackers, schools, families, and churches. There is already a core distribution being prepared, based on RedHat's distribution.

Jesux will aim to be an environment that is pleasant for Christians to work in, with all the amenities a Christian might expect, and when possible, free from worldly influences.

What is different about Jesux?

Below is a short list....

• default fortune file contains quotes from the scriptures, Augustine, C.S. Lewis, Chuck Swindoll, etc.


• Christian Enlightenment themes featuring Jesus, the cross, and other Christian icons...


• cal(1) includes Christian holidays...


• Squid proxy server (plus squidGuard) bundled and configured for blocking illicit web sites (including a regularly updated list of illicit sites and URL patterns to install on your own; we will be looking for mature and diligent volunteers to help maintain it)


• Optionally disable logins on Sunday, the day of rest...

All new code will be provided under the Christian Software Public License, an Open Source-compatible license....The final CSPL is very similar to the BSD license, where the required advertising is the text of John 3:16 from the King James Version of the Bible....

Also, we are seriously considering changing some fundamental OS features. The idea would be that function calls and features suggesting evil and otherwise pagan ideas would be changed.

abort(3)
kill(1)
references to "daemon"...

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If you follow a link, you find that the "author" of Jesux is a devout Christian him/herself:

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Jesux started out as a joke (and it still is, to some degree or another), based on the silly hubbub started over the mythical "Chick Linux". That whole thing was started as a mental exercise for Linux Chicks. They were simply discussing, "if we had a Linux for girls, what would it be like?" Predictably, flamage and overreacting ensued.

So Jesux was born, as a mental exercise. There was no goal other than to explore the idea.

The most important thing to note here is that Jesux was not intended as a slam on anybody. I am a devout Christian myself. Things were included in the distribution that I imagined some people might want. And, I think, it was a productive exercise....

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And the author got some mail:

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In Jesux, you should make sure the filesystem is strictly
nonhierarchical -- because only God can make a tree!

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We had news of your new Linux distro
submitted to Slashdot. Before we run a
story based on an anonymous Web site
with an anonymous e-mail address as the
only contact, we want to hear from you
in person or by phone.

Robin "roblimo" Miller
Slashdot Mng. Editor

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Through the history of computing, technological decisions have been
bent towards the will of our Lord. For instance, the decision for
teletype machines to write in uppercase so that the name of our Lord
could be written properly. And... ummm... teletypes were cool.

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