Why Linux development is like the Catholic Church
Linux shouldn’t work. It’s an operating system designed by hackers, the kind of people who can give you detailed plot synopses of every “Star Trek” episode. The “official” releases of the OS are really just releases of the kernel, the basic core of the system. Other companies and groups assemble drivers, programs, interfaces, etc., and package them all together in distributions, which are free to the public.
You can view and modify the Linux source code, if you’re into that kinky stuff. Microsoft would spend a zillion dollars in court before it let anyone look at the code for Windows. Anybody can submit changes to Linux if they want, and their code may be incorporated into the next release, but nobody gets any money if it does. Linux is a hodge-podge of patches, contributions, and hacks. Contrast that to Windows, which is designed by thousands of programmers closely monitored by supervisors and coordinators and managers.
So which one works better? Obviously, the one that’s backed by billions of dollars in capital: the one from the strictly hierarchical, take-no-prisoners, profit-crazy Microsoft, right? Wrong. Ask anybody who develops applications on both platforms, and they’ll tell you Linux is the more stable and flexible of the two. We’ve had Linux servers run for hundreds of days without a restart, which is a dangerous thing if you’re running Windows.
The Catholic Church may at first appear to be governed by the Windows model. It has a pope, bishops, and priests, plus assorted religious orders, lay orders, and apostolates, all with their own hierarchies. Looking at it from a distance, it looks like a top-down, authoritarian society. However, the Church prefers to promote that which grows organically from the life of the faithful, rather than imposing them from above. The pope and the other bishops don’t wake up and say, “let’s develop some doctrine today” — they respond to practices and lines of thought submitted to them by clergy and laity alike. Sometimes they are rejected, but more often, if they are in accordance with Scripture and Tradition, they are nurtured and encouraged. Some examples of the latter are the Rosary, the infallible doctrine of the Assumption, and lots of religious movements (nobody asked St. Francis of Assisi to found an order).
There are some other similarities, too: like the Church, Linux was founded by one man, Linus Torvalds, who continues to guide its development, and there are other men who supervise different aspects of the OS. (Although leadership in the Linux community is not reserved to men alone, there aren’t that many female kernel developers.) Torvalds and his inner circle are completely in charge of accepting and rejecting new code, just as the magisterium accepts or rejects new doctrines.
Many of the failures of Church governance come from people trying to run a Linux religion like it’s a Windows religion. There are Windows religions out there, such as the Mormons and the Unification Church, which are centralized and authoritarian. (I mean those words descriptively, not pejoratively.) Far too many officeholders regard themselves as managers instead of shepherds – that is, they think they are supposed to be directing things, instead of serving those who do all the work. The pope isn’t a despot, he is the servant of the servants of God. It is not we who support him, it is he who supports us from below. We, the laity, are supposed apply the teachings of the Church in everyday life, figure out what works, and check with the teaching authority to see if we’re doing it right.
As for Torvalds, his design philosophy begins with a kernel of wisdom: “I think a lot of things I don’t like tend to be overdesigned,” he said. “To me it’s bad. Somebody spent too much time thinking and too little time doing.” That statement could apply to so many things, in and out of church.