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Glory to God! :-) It's just my passion. I really hope someone does build this as a slick hosted service. I don't do well dealing with customers :-)
by timmorgan 12y ago
Glory to God! :-) It's just my passion. I really hope someone does build this as a slick hosted service. I don't do well dealing with customers :-)
- hangonhn 12y agoIt's lovely to see someone make something beautiful and useful for the sake of his own love and passion. We may not share the same love or passion but I admire your spirit.
- dopamean 12y agoI like this honesty. Do what you love. If you love writing code and not dealing with business and selling stuff then write code and don't go into business. PS. Nice app.
- sdreyesghn 12y agoDoing all of this based in your faith, conviction and altruism is admirable. you have my respect.
- JPKab 12y agoGood for you man. But just realize that sadly, many churches operate as businesses where the pastor and his family just pocket tithes for their lifestyle and build fancy LED signs instead of giving to the poor......
- xanderstrike 12y agoSome do, most don't.
- billjings 12y agoChurches, like people, are better understood in concrete instances than in abstract declarations.
- bduerst 12y agoI think this is a common misconception. While I am sure there are outliers as with any normalized distribution, the mean salary for clergy is about $45k/yr (according to the US BLS).
- afarrell 12y agoyes, but you're not counting all those potluck dinners!
- danielweber 12y agoIn the past decade churches have moved towards explicitly having their books run by non-members. It takes away the temptation of members abusing funds, and makes the people in charge apply the normal amount of oversight on bookkeeping, instead of "he's one of us, he'd never steal." PS I love the word bookkeeping and would love it even more if the "p" were doubled.
- lotharbot 12y agomy dad was always fond of the word for someone who works under the main bookkeeper: subbookkeeper
- lotharbot 12y agoI know a lot of pastors, and none of them have lifestyles that stand out in their communities. The inner city churches I know all have food banks, clothing banks, free hot meals, or similar programs. The churches I know in Utah set up safe houses for women and children fleeing polygamy. If you're connected to a church that operates as a business with the pastor taking home the profits, time to find a different church.
- maerF0x0 12y agoOr be an agent for change from within.
- DonHopkins 12y agoGood luck changing the Church of Scientology from within. Or lecturing the Pope about preventing AIDS by distributing free condoms, for that matter.
- PakG1 12y agoI believe the current pope has gone on record saying that the Christian world pays more attention to sexual issues than is warranted, when compared to other issues that exist in the world. I'm not a Catholic, but am quite impressed with this guy so far.
- DonHopkins 12y agoYou're awfully easy to impress, if only by the slight contrast to how absolutely evil, horrible and immoral the previous pope was. Not even the current "liberal hippie pope" is having much success changing the Catholic Church from within, so what makes you think anyone who's not its most powerful leader could ever possibly have any success? Anyone claiming they haven't resigned from the Catholic Church in disgrace because they want to remain inside to be an "agent of change" is totally full of it, and guilty of perpetuating the problem. Does it actually impress you that the current pope wasn't personally the architect and prosecutor of officially covering up and perpetuating all the terrible widespread sexual abuse systematically perpetrated by the Catholic Church, who wrote and enforced the official church policy of protecting priests who rape children, and excommunicating anyone who speaks out about it? http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/17/religion.childprotection http://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/aug/17/religion.childp... http://thewe.cc/weplanet/news/europe/vatican/papal_evil.htm http://thewe.cc/weplanet/news/europe/vatican/papal_evil.htm If the pope's desire to cover up sexual abuse is what you mean by "paying more attention to sexual issues than is warranted", can you please justify why you think the Catholic Church should pay less attention to their longstanding issues of raping children and protecting the rapists from prosecution? And why you think it's a good thing that the current pope doesn't think it's such a big deal that requires much attention?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- lotharbot 12y agoNot that long ago, you participated in an HN poll that showed about 3/4 of the HN population do not believe in God. Yet this particular comment, and several of yours in this post, have been downmodded heavily. That suggests either that the religious types on HN are very well organized, or that even the non-religious types find these comments out of place. I suggest it is the latter. You complained a few months ago about someone being rude, and said "Religious discrimination is no lesser than racism or sexism." Perhaps you should take your own advice to heart. Somebody here showed a project he's been working on which happens to be religious-focused. The right response is to discuss his software -- not to make discriminatory comments about religion. Notice that nobody has engaged in religious proselytizing in this thread except for you (in deleted comments). Nobody has tried to wedge in any sort of commentary about the truth of Christianity or any other religion except for you. Everybody else knows better. Here on HN, we prefer for comments to have actual substance -- to say genuinely interesting things. There's a section of the guidelines that's explicit about flamewar topics (religion, politics): only introduce those topics if you have something genuinely new to say. The parent comment, as well as most of yours, are stale and boring. There's nothing genuinely new, nothing profound, nothing insightful, just anger. That may be appropriate for FaceBook, but not for Hacker News. Elevate the conversation.
- Havoc 12y ago>churches operate as businesses In truth this seems to be the US mega-churches. Round here the pastors live a decent but modest life. Enough to raise a family not enough to buy a flashy car.
- nXqd 12y agoyou sir, you have my respect :)
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- rblatz 12y agoThis comment is unrelated to the topic and unhelpful.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- lotharbot 12y agovia https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html "Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation." "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."
- JonnieCache 12y agoWhy not just look for a partner? I'm sure you'd have plenty of takers. This thing is ready to start billing tomorrow by the looks of it. Then you would have more freedom to pursue your passions, while someone else deals with the customers for a percentage or whatever.
- timmorgan 12y agoTrue... it's even set up to run multiple "sites" off the same instance of the app and database. But I have a day job I love and don't need this to be a commercial thing.
- und3rw4t3rp00ps 12y agoDoes it come in Synagogue?
- kmfrk 12y agoJesus on Rails, Allah in Scala, God in Go.
- skizm 12y agoYou could at least sign up for gittip or throw a btc/ltc/dodge address up there. I'm sure users who donate will feel just as good as you do when you donate your services. Either way, the app looks great. Keep up the good work.
- ps4fanboy 12y agoI am sure you could donate to his church if you wanted too.
- hluska 12y agoI've read your other comments on this thread and I've got to tell you that I love your attitude and find you very inspirational! Thanks for showing off this app, it looks great...
- lifeisstillgood 12y agoThen can I suggest you find someone who can - otherwise one if us Atheists will host it and make money off your hard work ;-) Seriously, a simple hosted package, a non-profit org and I think you could find you have built a vehicle for doing some good elsewhere.
- mwcampbell 12y agoI realize you may have been joking, but I wonder how most atheists and other nonreligious people here would feel about selling a product or service targeted specifically at religious people or churches. To me, it feels dirty, like I would be saying, "I know that religions are false and even harmful, but I'm going to milk those less enlightened believers for all they're worth."
- krapp 12y agoWhat difference would it make? Religious institutions, writers, horse-traders, scuba divers - a market is a market. If you go into any business harboring that level of disrespect for your customers then you're probably going to fail to provide a product they'll be willing to use. Although there is also an argument to be made for domain experience - if you're going to sell a service to religious groups wouldn't you be more likely to understand the market without having a bias against religion?
- sbhere 12y agoThis is actually startlingly true - it would make a lot of sense for someone to steal OP's idea and capitalize on it. I hope, however, that no one does. It's a great thing he's done.
- pmontra 12y agoYeah, capitalizing on such an effort might spoil the fun but... The code has been licensed under an Affero GPL v3 license so anybody using it in production must release any modifications done. So it's not really stealing the idea or the code, only the business model, which the OP apparently doesn't want to pursue anyway. A non Affero license (or MIT, BSD, Apache) would have shut him off from his code (I can't decide if those using those licenses are masochists or just extremely kind). With this choice of the license the OP will get fixes and improvements and probably be happy with that. Furthermore he could be hired to do them, regardless of the license.
- marincounty 12y agoI would give it away for free, and sell it. My process would be pretty simple. I would go to Guidestar and download the financials for the last three years(click free preview). If the church is legit, and not a moneymaker for a few select people they would get the software for free. You are a good man--
- rat87 12y agoreminds me of this quote > Her smile tilted. “Mark, you don’t pay back your parents. You can’t. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It’s a sort of entailment. Or if you don’t have children of the body, it’s left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.” - from "A Civil Campagaign"(The Vorkosigan Saga Series) by Lois Bujold