On the ethics of Open Source / Free Software

[plan19]

Suppose Dave the developer produces a small but useful bit of software. He makes the binaries (useful.exe, installation files, etc.) and the source code files (from which any person can create the binaries themselves) freely available on his website, though he also offers to mail people a CD of the program for like $4.

I am a computer programmer by trade. I have worked for clients of all sizes, and currently take great joy in dealing with small customers. In certain cases, my software has represented a cost savings of tens of millions of dollars.

For current cases, I pride myself on having saved clients thousands upon thousands of dollars.

Some of this software I charged for… some if it I did not. Some of it I invested great amounts of time in, and then gave away for free simply because I wanted to see good people do great things that they could otherwise not afford to be able to do.

That being said… It doesn’t bother me one bit that I in most cases see only a fraction, or in some cases none of the actual worth of my software. Truth be told, I have had many many opportunities to make completely ridiculous sums of money… but money doesn’t motivate me. I’m sorry, but it doesn’t. Solving new problems, or working on cool things… that motivates me.

It’s the amazing thing about software… Good software can change the world. Most of us programmers think of software more as art than anything else… as such, we are glad to see them in use.

From my understanding, a piece of software that I wrote about 13 years ago is still being used to teach math and science teachers how to use advanced graphing calculators. Do you have any idea how cool that is to me? My software made a difference in the lives of thousands of teachers, and who knows how many students that have passed through their classrooms… made a bunch of sales for hard-working salesmen, and helped keep a whole bunch of people in work, building calculators and neat stuff to hook into them. It still puts a smile on my face. Some 200 lines of code did all that.

Open Source coders? Same way.

 

[tractarian]

flyingfish:

I think I have already said that I simply don’t buy in to the comparison of software developers with scientists. Calling a real line that everyone acknowledges “arbitrary” is not an argument.

I am all in favor of most knowledge that pertains to the public being available, for free, to the entire public. But I am not talking about knowledge I am talking about software and code.

I am not defending the concept of “intellectual property” as it applies to software. In fact I think it is part of the problem I am addressing, because it perpetuations what I see as an arbitrary line drawn between producers of physical goods and producers of non-physical goods. Scientists discover facts and insights about the universe that were already there. Software developers, like any other builders, make things that were not already there. If I make something, I would consider it an insult to have someone declare my creation a “discovery”. Wouldn’t you?

A discovery like calculus is knowledge. An invention like a word processing application is a tool. If some can’t (or won’t) acknowledge that as a real distinction and not an “arbitrary line”, then there really is no common ground to discuss this issue, without a common language and perception of reality.

 

[tractarian]

Very cool re. the graphing calculator app!

That really is what it’s about: solving problems, working on cool things, and hopefully making the world a better place in so doing.

People I know or have heard/read from who feel very strongly about Open Source or Free and Open Source (see links above for the difference) often do so for deeply ethical reasons. They could do all the things they love about their work equally well in the context of proprietary software, but they came to the conclusion, fistly, that the context in which the problems get solved and the code gets written, is not necessarily a neutral thing: it can contribute to a better society overall, or be neutral, or maybe make things worse. They secondly concluded that the proprietary model (exemplified by Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple as some big players but a host of small-to-medium businesses as well) is a context that hinders their work’s capacity to benefit society, or (the more extreme anti-proprietary types) that it is a social injustice, and that they cannot participate in it. So they have fostered all these alternate contexts in which to do the work they want to get back to doing anyway, and I cheer for that, I really do. It’s just that I am not so quick to accept a model as good just because it’s alternative is [said to be] bad.

In this thread I’ve tried to do the same thing, looking not just at the open source / FOSS models, but at the context in which they were created, the ideological roots. I’ve been sincerely troubled by what I’ve found there, and frustrated by the way economic/technical arguments crowd out deeper philosophical questions.

Dealing with those philosophical suppositions, the discussion so far has needed to “zoom in” away from the larger context of social & commutative justice, back to the individual dude writin’ code: what is he exactly? The idea that the developer is a species in the same genus as scientists seems persistently popular, much more so than I would’ve guessed because to me as a developer it flies in the face of common sense and everyday experience, which is more like developer-as-builder. “Metal” is an abstract concept that nobody owns, and the principles of mechanics likewise nobody owns, but that can’t stop anyone from putting a patent on a new wristwatch design and being considered the rightful owner of the design, and all that implies. That’s how I view software, which is made out of 1s and 0s and works because of many principles that have no owner. When the more zealous Free and Open Source (FOSS) ideologues demand that software cannot have owners, I am reminded of the watchmaker and feel unjustly discriminated against.

The coder-as-artist view might be a good compromise. Every year more artists and musicians are flocking away from older licensing models towards things like Creative Commons, a model that to me looks like the perfect compromise between strict access management and poverty-is-compulsory licensing models. The good and successful ones always have ways to be fairly compensated for their works, but they acknowledge that once a work is created, it is “out there” for everyone.

The analogy (I’m fond of analogies ) of the stonecutter working at a little bit of what will become a Gothic cathedral is one that has always stuck in my mind over the years, and while I’ve been writing each and every one of these posts so far. It is important to point out both that the stone was not cut for free, and that viewing the beauty of the cathedral has always been free.

I realise that gets no closer to a “precedent” for what software engineering really is (if we were able to take the same liberties with copying & altering cathedrals that we can with code, I think the world would quickly become a very crowded and oftener than not an ugly place where the original beauty needs to be diligently searched out…something that may be a metaphor for the digital world today), but it is one ideal, out of many contrary ideals.

 

[plan19]

For all non-programmers out there… dig this:
demigodllc.com/~zak/geek/hack.shtml#Care
pbm.com/~lindahl/mel.html

Take a look at the culture, and the mindset of the sorts of people that make open source software possible…

Oh, and for the record: Nobody other than Richard Stallman takes Richard Stallman seriously… And nobody outside of high school or college cares about Lawrence Lessig.

You can then wipe away all of the intellectual arguments and think of it in a more sensible light by asking one question:

Do I care about my code?

GPL - Yes. I want the world to see it, and everyone to see my wonderful work of art and be able to modify it and take it apart and tinker with it… so long as they are willing to show everyone else my really wonderful work of art.

BSD - Yes. I want anybody to be able to use it as they see fit. The artistry of my really neat code matters much less than the really cool applications of it, and if I make your life easier… well, that’s cool too.

Apache License - No. I just read about who Alan Cox is, and I wanna be just like him.

CC - No. I used a “cool” license typically invoked by hippies and artists.

 

[PaulinVA]

tractarian, are you afraid that the Open Source world is diluting the value of developers?

I really don’t follow your line of thinking.

If I want to, in my spare time, participate in the development of Firefox, or Bugzilla, or Apache, or some other effort, and give the result away for free, why do you care?

By the way, the open source movement is very valuable to companies that sell software services.

Based on capacity on a web site and all, I can hire three or four developers and create my site using Linux, JBOSS/Tomcat, My SQL, and other Open Source tools and create jobs where none existed. If I had to buy Weblogic and Oracle or SQL Server, I either wouldn’t make the site or would only hire two developers because of the software cost.

So, the guys at Oracle didn’t make a sale, but I create/sourced two more jobs instead.

So, you might not be hired to write a cheaper application server, but you will be hired to create a site using a free application server.

 

[brittrossiter]

I see no inherent moral problem with producing or consuming Free/Open Source Software in and of itself, all else being equal.

If I bake a tray of cookies (I make excellent cookies) and, by my own free will, place those cookies on a plate and set the plate on my front porch, with the intention that passers-by can stop and munch to their heart’s content, I suffer no injustice if those passers-by in fact take cookies and eat them, all else being equal. My intention in setting the cookies out was to provide pleasing nourishment to passers-by, and this is exactly what happened. Assuming that cookies are nourishing, that is.

I see no difference between the above analogy and the development and use of free/open source software.

Now, if my intention in setting the cookies out was to let them cool, and passers-by take and eat them, I would suffer an injustice.

Also, if my intentions were to give them away as nourishment, but passers-by instead take the cookies and smash them into the ground, I would also suffer an injustice.

And I guess that if the passers-by took and ate the cookies without any intention of performing any return act of charity - either directed towards me or “paying it forward” to someone else - then, with that added fact, there might be an injustice.

But I do not see how the recipient of what amounts to a freely-given gift works an injustice on the giver merely by accepting and using the gift.

 

[tractarian]

PaulinVA:
I know a lot of my posts are kinda long & wordy, but I’ve poured out a lot of ink in order to explain my “line of thinking” as thoroughly as possible; if you or anyone else can’t follow it, there’s just nothing further I can do to help that. Did my quick & dirty outline of commutative justice from a Thomist standpoint not help out? Of course I know Thomism isn’t the only game in town in the theology of ethics but I do think it’s the most accessible line of thought.

 

[tractarian]

Take a look at the culture, and the mindset of the sorts of people that make open source software possible…
Oh, and for the record: Nobody other than Richard Stallman takes Richard Stallman seriously… And nobody outside of high school or college cares about Lawrence Lessig.
You can then wipe away all of the intellectual arguments and think of it in a more sensible light by asking one question:
Do I care about my code?

There are so many things wrong with this that I wouldn’t go too far in saying it just about sums up the source of my moral qualms.

“The culture and mindset of the sorts of people that make open source software possible” is exactly what I have a problem with, as a Christian not as a developer. The egoism of “hacker culture” illustrated well by plan19’s “Care and Feeding” article is one thing; I know plenty of great programmers who are far from the miserable hedonists depicted by that outdated stereotype. I do not mean ‘miserable’ as an insult; of all the ones I met who really did by into hacker culture, what struck me about them, aside from their inability to say anything with sincerity, was that they seemed very unhappy. I have a couple Christian friends who were unfortunate enough to work in a company setting that really was steeped in that ethic (so I guess it isn’t always a false stereotype) and, taken that far, it really is as destructive to one’s concept of work and self as the Sexual Revolution was to one’s concept of intimacy and self. One friend stuck it out, another discerned that he had to find a different career path because it was hurting his faith. I did not laugh when he told me that.

For the historical record, Stallman and guys from that same culture and mindset are the people who made open source software possible (and I’d never heard of Lessig before now, though I have the utmost respect for Creative Commons). I have been very relieved over the past few days’ looking around to learn about alternatives to GNU that are more moderate (tho plan19’s slapjob summary was a bit childish and unnecessary, quick dismissals and “mud throwing” are so common in the computer world that it’s not much of a big deal. Everyone expects ya to make up your own mind anyway). More on that “which license is best” issue in a future post.

“You can then wipe away all of the intellectual arguments…” No, you can’t. Or I suppose you could, if you don’t respect your intellect. If you don’t view your life as a apostolate in the world, or your “job” as a vocation.
Not if you take yourself seriously as someone called by God with a real vocation in the world. Not if you have self-respect as an intellectual being.
And why on earth would you want to wipe away intellectual arguments, especially if they are really ethical/moral arguments as mine are? Is it because writing code is inherently morally neutral? Of course it is. But no one’s vocation in life is neutral (see below). Is it moral relativism – what I do means what I mean it to mean? I might license some of my code under a GPL license for my own reason’s, but Stallman’s nutty philosophy of ethics is still at the root of that GPL, so I’d still be supporting a nutty ideology I don’t believe in, no matter what I think my actions “mean.”

“Do I care about my code?” Of course I do (yes I realize that question specifically directed at me but I am specifically answering it anyway). I’m no artist, but I believe I love writing great code the way a painter must love perfecting some new technique and utilizing it to its greatest possible expression. But everyone’s occupation can become an idol, all the more so when it posseses great intrinsic goodness and beauty and truth. I must love people and social justice more than I love code or anything to do with the code, and God above all. (If any reader cannot follow that “line of reasoning”, please redirect your browser here where no one brings up such pesky ideas like idolatry or social justice, much less God). That is why, in this thread at least, I don’t give a fig about arguments in favor of open source about how it’s better for the economy or the development community as a whole; I’m thinking of humanity as a whole. I very happy when my “free and open administrative assistant” analogy got shot full of wholes (please shoot more!) because that got closer to the heart of the matter.

 

[plan19]

There are so many things wrong with this that I wouldn’t go too far in saying it just about sums up the source of my moral qualms.

“The culture and mindset of the sorts of people that make open source software possible” is exactly what I have a problem with, as a Christian not as a developer. The egoism of “hacker culture” illustrated well by plan19’s “Care and Feeding” article is one thing;

This little statement tells me that you just don’t get it, and probably never will.

Let me guess, you’re a manager?

It’s not about egoism… it’s about doing something cool… and accepting different concepts of cool than what you are used to.

Keep in mind that these same hackers are the ones IBM found are 300% more efficient than other programmers.

I know plenty of great programmers who are far from the miserable hedonists depicted by that outdated stereotype.

They are programmers… I wasn’t talking about them.

I do not mean ‘miserable’ as an insult; of all the ones I met who really did by into hacker culture, what struck me about them, aside from their inability to say anything with sincerity, was that they seemed very unhappy.

Define “hacker culture” because hackers, as in “really talented awesome programmers” specifically avoid things like cliques… there is, in fact, no culture of which to speak of.

I have a couple Christian friends who were unfortunate enough to work in a company setting that really was steeped in that ethic (so I guess it isn’t always a false stereotype) and, taken that far, it really is as destructive to one’s concept of work and self as the Sexual Revolution was to one’s concept of intimacy and self.

Outside looking in.

One friend stuck it out, another discerned that he had to find a different career path because it was hurting his faith. I did not laugh when he told me that.

Your friends were mediocre programmers. I get it.

For the historical record, Stallman and guys from that same culture and mindset are the people who made open source software possible (and I’d never heard of Lessig before now, though I have the utmost respect for Creative Commons).

Sorry, dude. Put down your copy of Open Sources and take a deep cleansing breath. Hackers have been sharing code since long before the GPL.

I have been very relieved over the past few days’ looking around to learn about alternatives to GNU that are more moderate (tho plan19’s slapjob summary was a bit childish and unnecessary, quick dismissals and “mud throwing” are so common in the computer world that it’s not much of a big deal. Everyone expects ya to make up your own mind anyway). More on that “which license is best” issue in a future post.

The thread isn’t about which license to choose. It’s about the ethics.

I was explaining, for me, as a programmer… why I don’t value my work the way that others in this thread seem to want to value my work.

 

[PaulinVA]

PaulinVA:
I know a lot of my posts are kinda long & wordy, but I’ve poured out a lot of ink in order to explain my “line of thinking” as thoroughly as possible; if you or anyone else can’t follow it, there’s just nothing further I can do to help that. Did my quick & dirty outline of commutative justice from a Thomist standpoint not help out? Of course I know Thomism isn’t the only game in town in the theology of ethics but I do think it’s the most accessible line of thought.

No, you lost me when, in post 3, you said:

No matter how the value of the software and/or the work put into making it, that is value Dave will never see. Ergo, something rightfully his is not being rendered to him. Dave’s consent in the matter is irrelevant; suffering an injustice willingly (or in ignorance) doesn’t make it stop being an injustice.

If I volunteer at the parish and help them run some CAT 5 cable or write them a little application that does something useful, and don’t get paid, that is unjust? If I come in and donate hours to sort food in the food pantry or paint a mural in the parish hall that’s unjust?

 

[flyingfish]

flyingfish:

I think I have already said that I simply don’t buy in to the comparison of software developers with scientists. Calling a real line that everyone acknowledges “arbitrary” is not an argument.

You’ve said it, but you haven’t justified it. Why do you think that you have a right to own a program you developed, but a scientists don’t have the right to own the theoretical models for the world they develop?

The line is only there because lawmakers have put it there (I don’t even know if it’s the case in all countries), there is no philosophical distinction.

I find it interesting that you want to forbid scientists to have full rights over the theories they create, but at the same time feel so strongly about your right to have full rights over the software you create.

Scientists discover facts and insights about the universe that were already there. Software developers, like any other builders, make things that were not already there. If I make something, I would consider it an insult to have someone declare my creation a “discovery”. Wouldn’t you?

Scientists create models. Take Newton’s theory of gravity, it is a model (in fact a wrong one, Einstein’s theory of gravity, also known as general relativity, is a superior but also imperfect model).

These models are approximations for reality. Newton didn’t find his theory of gravity under a rock, he created it. It is the product of his intellectual labor. In this way, it is no different at all from the product of your labor in making software.

I find it interesting that you say the line between physical goods and intellectual goods is artificial, but the line between software and similarly created/developed models for the world is not.

(Not to mention that, even if I were to grant your argument about discoveries, it wouldn’t apply to many branches of mathematics. Since I doubt you can say mathematical frameworks for computing (say linear algebra) are discoveries rather than inventions.)

 

[tractarian]

If I volunteer at the parish and help them run some CAT 5 cable or write them a little application that does something useful, and don’t get paid, that is unjust? If I come in and donate hours to sort food in the food pantry or paint a mural in the parish hall that’s unjust?

I did actually already hear and respond to that same objection, which is probably the strongest moral defense of some (not all) Free and Open Source models.

The gist of my response was 1) I am not, for the 100th time, attacking free software / open source software, I am merely asking that its morality be justified, not blindly assumed; 2) doing something for free for charity isn’t the same thing as doing something for free for someone else’s profit, either in business terms or [in the Thomistic framework I am working in, tho I eagerly invite alternative frameworks so long as they aren’t blatantly anti-Christian] in ethical terms.

I think it’s worthwhile to mention that ethics, as understood by the ancient Greeks like Aristotle and into the Christian tradition, is supposed to be about the pursuit of virtue more than the avoidance of “doing bad things.”
When it comes to making really cool & useful stuff like software applications, in the context of useful-for-businesses’-profits, the question centers on what methods and models of doing business are most virtuous? Restating the question that way may put certain people off the defensive, because I’m not trying to brand any model as intrinsically evil or stupid.

On the one end of the spectrum is proprietary / closed-source, which takes up the preexisting business models wholesale without challenging them at all; software is just business as usual, nothing special to take into account. On the opposite end is FOSS/GNU/GPL which, while rarely indicting business, profit and capitalism directly, is very much a product of '60s & '70s counter-culture thinking, openly hostile to property rights and many individualist rights, more user-friendly to utopian/communitarian ideals than for-profit businesses of any size.

 

[tractarian]

plan19:
Your first post was insightful; your last 2 make me wonder if it’s the same person writing. Grow up.

flyingfish:
We strongly disagree, and I still don’t think you’ve quite gotten the gist of what I’m trying to do, but I’m glad we’re talking philosophy at least.

First of all I am not out to prove anything, I am out to explore something. If all or at least some models of “free and open source software” are ethical from a commutative/social justice standpoint, it shouldn’t be too hard to justify it, right? I don’t believe I have to justify a request for something else to justify itself!!

At any rate, I don’t think anyone has justified the parallel between a scientific theory and a software program. I find that parallel pretty hard to swallow, but it’s obvious that to you, it is self-evident.

That is a good point about theories being models and thus created things in some sense; tho scientists & mathematicians differ among themselves about whether they are “approximations at the truth” and thus in some sense pre-existing things (including linear algebra) according to a Platonic model, or if they are pure creations of our mind. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics for the going theories, it’s pretty interesting. But please don’t put words in my mouth about me “wanting to forbid” anyone anything; the ownership scientists may or may not claim over their discoveries is none of my business, and definitely not off-topic.

Granted that scientific or mathematical models are created, they are still ideas, not things in the same way that my wristwatch is a thing. The design specifications for my wristwatch is an idea. If I make those design specs open to the public (Open Data is a catchy concept just like Open Source does that alter the creators’ rights to, if they so choose, hold exclusive rights to manufacture and sell that exact wristwatch? No. If they choose otherwise, to waive that right, then anyone can go to town and use the specs to make their own watches just like it.

But in purely *practical *terms, almost nobody is going to be making their own wristwatches due to the difficulty and expense (in materials/money/time), so the manufacturer’s rights are pretty secure. Not so the software developer, who fills the same fundamental role in the world – make stuff people will want to use – but is unlucky that his materials have less inherent difficulty and expense to replicate. I’ve already mentioned this watchmaker analogy but I need to stress that the difference is a practical one, not an ontological / philosophical one. I say, Q.E.D., that therefore there should be no ethical distinction drawn between the watchmaker and the programmer.

Maybe all lines are arbitrary, flyingfish. I think I have sufficiently demonstrated that although your parallel between scientists and developers has its merits, my parallel between inventors and developers is closer.

 

[tractarian]

“All those things which make up the temporal order, namely, the good things of life and the prosperity of the family, culture, economic matters, the arts and professions, the laws of the political community, international relations, and other matters of this kind, as well as their development and progress, not only aid in the attainment of man’s ultimate goal but also possess their own intrinsic value. This value has been established in them by God, whether they are considered in themselves or as parts of the whole temporal order” (Apostolicam Actuositatem, 7). That means that caring about the code, caring about other people, and caring about what God wants of us in life are truly inseparable.

I am skeptical of certain open source models for many of the same reasons and good will that open source folks felt led to be skeptical of, disillusioned with, and ultimately reject proprietary / closed-source models: I want to be sure that my work is going to the benefit of society, and that means doing the work in a context that has the least hindrances toward that goal. Most of the people who came up with open source were hippies whose view of what constitutes a benefit vs. detriment to society are ideas I strongly disagree with from the standpoint of Catholic social teaching (and sometimes other doctrines!)…this, I have seen for myself by reading their stated justifications for open source.

Here’s where licenses & ethics meet: as a coder and a Catholic (hmm wonder if there’s some nifty :newidea: Catholic Coders web communities out there …), I’d be naive if I thought that there exists some preexisting model that perfectly embodies everything Catholic Social Justice teachings can bring to bear upon the business practices of software development; it isn’t anyone’s job to cater to us that way, it’s our job as **apostles **to make use of worldly realities as best we can to bear social justice ourselves, even if it means working with terrible models to start with.

That means compromise; it means getting out of my Elysian fields where every good Christian can avoid ever coming near ethically questionable ideas, workplaces or people. I have a lot of respect for Christians like my aforementioned friend who eventually decide that it’s not worth staying in a toxic moral environment; they endure ridicule from “the world” (e.g. fellow coders, like in an above post) because of their decision to cut out their eye or their hand (or their career advancement) lest it lead them to sin. However, most of the time I think the better choice is to dive right into the lion’s den and *evangelize *the world, every corner of the world, both individual people (advice on how to evangelize in the often hostile-to-faith “geek” culture, would make a good thread by itself…) and the systems that we inherit. In this case, the various competing (but sometimes complementary) models of how software goes from developers’ minds into code into tools we can use.

But first that means diving in; and that means compromise. I said or implied earlier that our actions speak louder than our words, and that means accepting a given model means implicitly accepting the philosophy / raison d’être upon which that model was intentionally based, whether we mean to do that or not. That’s true as far as it goes, but it cannot be the whole story there. We participate in things all the time despite disagreement with some points of ideology; a perfect example is that the great majority of voters in the U.S. do not agree with 100% of the platform of the party they end up deciding to vote for candidates in.

That certainly does not mean a green light to intellectual laziness and not bothering to learn the ideologies and intentions behind the choices we side with. Does it make it all a matter of degree? If so, is there some definite line to be determined, similar to how many Catholic voters determine “non-negotiables”? This brings the issue to more concrete terms, something that could be a valuable contribution to Computer Ethics, if licenses, contracts, & patents, like all legal objects, are also *moral documents *that contribute to some moral visions and can be used to discourage alternative visions. As McLuhan said the medium is the message; in this case a software license is part of the medium that brings software to the people.

Now all I need is a grant so I can earn my Masters/PhD finding answers to this. LOL

 

[Just_Lurking]

To me, free software is like the razor company giving away the razor, but then selling the razor blades at a markup to make up for the cost of the “free” razors. Similarly, with free software, you give away the software, but you make up for it in the support and book writing. For example, LinusTorvalds (see here) made $20 million by giving away Linux.

The group I work with is seriously considering this question right now. We have been trying to sell our product for years, and it’s been a difficult market. If we give away a subset of our product for free, that might create a groundswell of interest that could help us market the full product. Our top three competitors are all open source.

 

[DanteAlighieri]

This is a topic I’m really interested in.

I do believe that FOSS is just, and I think your analysis fails to take voluntarism into account. The organizations that produce the free software are doing it voluntarily, not out of coercion. They wish for their software to be freely available (in binary and source form) such that others might use it. To me this seems no more unjust than a Catholic charity giving out “free” food to the poor.

Are there any other aspects of the argument that you would like to consider?

Agreed. I have no claim on the earnings of a formerly homeless man who becomes a billionaire entrepreneur due to the opportunity that my charity or voluntarism afforded him. Yes, there is real value to the software developer’s work, but he is choosing to provide it for free.

Note: Dave is willingly submitting his work to a marketplace in which it is understood that one’s work will be taken and used by others as they see fit. It is a voluntary transaction entered into by the creator of the software and the user.

Peace,
Dante

 

[flyingfish]

Maybe all lines are arbitrary, flyingfish. I think I have sufficiently demonstrated that although your parallel between scientists and developers has its merits, my parallel between inventors and developers is closer.

I don’t think we disagree that much. Fundamentally, people who invent something (say a particular type of watch), create a computer program, or create a scientific theory or mathematical method are in the same boat.

They are all working with their minds (I’m not addressing here the people who actually build the watch, just the design which presumably can get patented), and they are all creating something that may be useful to others.

I think they all deserve to be compensated for their work. It just so happens that in our societies, scientists and mathematicians tend to make money by working in salaried positions while doing their work, while inventors, programmers etc. make money by selling the products of their labor (or for the most part, by working for corporations for a salary and having the corporations own and sell their creations).

This to me seems to be sourced in politics than philosophy (perhaps not without the influence of big business on the kinds of laws politicians make).

The philosophical issue to me here is whether it makes sense for a person to fully own the product of their (intellectual) work. Society has agreed that scientists cannot do this, so Newton can’t say that the idea of calculus is his, and everyone who uses it should pay him or be guilty of a crime. People can use calculus and profit from its use without paying Newton a cent.

At the same time, we have said that if a corporation develops a new drug, say, others can’t go ahead and use that research to develop and profit from it. What’s the difference? The only difference to me seems that corporations have power and have been able to secure this kind of a system since it allows them to make profits.

Fundamentally, I don’t think it makes sense for any person to fully own their intellectual work because no person works in a vacuum. Any invention/theory depends on the work that went before. Not to mention that it does not suit humanity to allow such ownership as it would slow progress (like in the case of biotech companies wanting to charge scientists for doing research on patented gene sequences).

 

[NoAvailableName]

Tractarian has written…

concrete objections to the foundational ideas used to justify FOSS … I am not attacking FOSS so it isn’t my object to refute defenses of it … I see some problems with FOSS, and the burden of proof is to exonerate it … I am all for as much code as possible being open source … am not satisfied with always giving FOSS a free pass, as though its upstanding ethics were self-evident: it is far from self-evident to me, and I want to see it proven or demonstrated, not simply assumed… it just may be that “free and open source software” is to computer ethics was the '60s revolution was and is to sexual ethics … I did actually already hear and respond to that same objection, which is probably the strongest moral defense of some (not all) Free and Open Source models … The gist of my response was 1) I am not, for the 100th time, attacking free software / open source software, I am merely asking that its morality be justified, not blindly assumed

I am confused. It seems like every time someone has offered you an explanation of why FOSS is ok (mostly revolving around charity and free will of the person giving it away), you state that you weren’t really attacking it, and ask again for someone to defend FOSS. Once the defense is again given, you go back to denying that you were attacking FOSS in the first place and then immediately ask for someone to defend it again.

It isn’t really that hard to understand. Giving something away can be good or bad. If I give food to a homeless person, I have done something good. If I give a knife to someone who wants to use it to kill a homeless person, I have done something bad. The situation doesn’t change when you move to software; it can still be either good or bad. It has to be decided on a case by case basis. Firefox → good. Virus → bad.

 

[PaulinVA]

The gist of my response was 1) I am not, for the 100th time, attacking free software / open source software, I am merely asking that its morality be justified, not blindly assumed; 2) doing something for free for charity isn’t the same thing as doing something for free for someone else’s profit, either in business terms or [in the Thomistic framework I am working in, tho I eagerly invite alternative frameworks so long as they aren’t blatantly anti-Christian] in ethical terms.

1. Justifying the morality of people banding together and creating an application for free?
2. If I do something for free for a charity, their 'cost of goods" is reduced to zero for that particular activity. They can do what they want with that thing I created. They can sell it to someone, I suppose. I gave it to them freely. (Well, really, I’m sure that I copyrighted it and gave them a license to use it )

If I create something for a group of people and give them the license for it, and I do not get paid, I have reduced their ‘cost of goods’ to zero. If the license includes the right to sell it, or I give them the copyright, well, they can do anything with it.

If the license allows them to sell the application (source and executables) if they add some value to it, or allows them to sell “support”, that is fine.

Your questions are interesting, but there are a million examples of where the very thing occurs “in nature”. If I pay you $150/hour to write some code, and go on to use that to make millions, isn’t that the same as you donating it and I make hundreds of thousands?

 

[plan19]

I am confused. It seems like every time someone has offered you an explanation of why FOSS is ok (mostly revolving around charity and free will of the person giving it away), you state that you weren’t really attacking it, and ask again for someone to defend FOSS. Once the defense is again given, you go back to denying that you were attacking FOSS in the first place and then immediately ask for someone to defend it again.

He just took a class in software ethics, or read a book on it. Last week he was probably
telling all his friends about how Xtreme Programming as a model defeats the old “cowboy model”. Last month he was carrying around a dog-eared copy of The Cathedral And The Bazaar. Next month he’ll be all over Agile Development.

This is someone who wants to talk about programming and understands nothing of what it is like to be a Real Programmer. He’s the guy of negligible skill who appears on every team in a corporate IT division… who likes to over-politicize everything because he has “valuable (name removed by moderator)ut” and wants to drag you to 18 different meetings to revise the spec into something the customer doesn’t even want so they can be “part of the process”.

He is what happened when IT came out of the basement, and off of the big iron.

In other words… he is not to be taken seriously.