Ethics (OT) (was Re: Antiwar License)

[Sergey Goldgaber]

--- Rodrigo Barbosa <rodrigob at tisbrasil.com.br> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 03, 2003 at 08:09:21PM -0800, Sergey Goldgaber wrote:
> > > And the current pending war is hardly the only issue that people
> > > are concerned about. Consider the state that software would be in
> > > if every possible issue were raised in a license.
> > 
> > Yes, it is always possible that people everywhere will
> > restrict software use based on their ethics.  This may not
> > be a positive result from a utilitarian perspective of
> > deriving maximum use from software (pesky ethics have a knack
> > for just getting in the way), but for those who act in
> > an ethical manner this result will be desirable.
> > 
> > Your concerns may be about "the state of software", but mine
> > is about whether my work will be used to kill.  A concern
> > with a prevalance of ethical licenses causing havoc on
> > the the usefullness of software can not be a primary
> > one for me.
> 
> Why don't you simply keep your software private. If you avoid
> distributing it, you can be 100% certain it will not be used
> to support war.
> 
> As we said before, you can't enforce this kind of license. So,
> your only choise is to simply DON'T distribute your software.

Yes, that is definately one option I am considering.  However, there
are some detractions from such a choice.  One of them being that I
believe an Antiwar License has the potential to be very popular.  If
this does indeed occur, then it will help the anti-war movement, shine
more light on the ethical issues of software development, inspire
others, and sway public oppinion to see open source software in an even
more positive light.

Now, I would like to once again invite anyone interested in continuing
this discussion to join the OSSEthics list (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ossethics ) and continue it there, as the
OSI Discussion List really isn't the appropriate forum to hold a
political discussion of this nature, especially since it is clear that
an Antiwar License will likely not be compatible with the OSD as it
stands now.


  --Sergey


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, more
http://taxes.yahoo.com/
--
license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3