Converting from Microsoft will not save your soul

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COMPANIES which wish to convert their computers away from Microsoft and follow a boycott by far right US Christian religious ministers might have a bit of a job.

Yesterday we reported how a Redmond minister had ordered a boycott on Microsoft for supporting gay rights legislation.

However, as some of our readers pointed out, that leaves those who make their business decisions based on the whims of a Church in a bit of a dilemma. Most operating systems seem to have been damned by the Christian right at some point in their history.

Apple was damned by religious conservatives last year for being associated with a logo of a two-horned red devil. The devil is the logo of the FreeBSD Unix upon which Apple%u2019s operating system is based.

James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, said during an interview on Fox News that the image was Satanic and he called for an Apple boycott.

"No respectable American company should want to ally itself with the Lord of Darkness or make light of him," he said. We assume he was taking about Satan.

He was also miffed that Apple uses what it calls the Darwin code. Dobson said that Darwin didn%u2019t believe that the world was created in seven days and was also a bad guy.

At the time Dobson called for people to switch to Vole software as a snub to Jobs and the demonic FreeBSD. Now it seems his associate Ken Hutcherson has shut that door for Christians.

Linux remains an alternative, as it is sufficiently far away from the demon Unix not to be noticed, other than by SCO lawyers. But apparently the Christian Right also dislike any software that contains Wizards and Daemons, so it sounds like it is back to a pen and paper for those who wish to follow such religions.