Ethics in software

Ethics in software

Posted Dec 22, 2005 14:17 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091)
In reply to: Mandriva to ship Skype by fergal
Parent article: Mandriva to ship Skype

Morality has a reason to exist: theoretical principles bring about practical changes. Dumb people just have things happen to them and cannot understand the reasons; clever people can distill their experiences into general rules of behavior. Really clever people can listen to others and learn from their experiences, without the need of actually suffering damage.

I am beginning to understand why Stallman always starts his speeches about free software with the famous printer-driver story. It is so that his audience can see that these principles have an actual applicability to the real world; it is not just an ethical problem. Free software solves real problems that people have all the time, like "why can't I run this software / hardware" or "how can I access my data".

Many commentators have mentioned a bunch of actual, practical reasons for preferring free software within the specific field of internet telephony. They have been completely lost on you; you just see "moral reasons". Maybe other readers can extract some benefit from the thread.

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