Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 8:57 UTC (Wed) by gowen (guest, #23914)
In reply to: Ethics and morals. by neilbrown
Parent article: Interview with Linus Torvalds (LinuxFR)

There are those in the Free Software community who (fairly vociferously) advocate a moral obligation above-and-beyond license compliance. These responisiblities vary, but usually include things like "co-operate with upstream", "release often", "develop in public", "build a open community", "release from SCM rather than 'throw code over the wall'".

Ironically, very few of these criteria would've been met by the FSF, as recently as 2000. Personally I think its these additional "personal morality" constraints that Linus is referring, when he talks about morality being personal. If you conform to the licence, you don't have to do things the way he does them.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 9:34 UTC (Wed) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link] (2 responses)

Actually, it's pretty clear that it ISN'T just these additional moral expectations. He clearly states:

"but I really want to point out that it's not that the license is somehow ethical per se. A lot of other people think that the BSD license with its even more freedoms is a better license for them. And others will prefer to use a license that leaves all the rights with the original copyright holder, and gives no rights to the sources at all to others. And for them, that is their answer. And it's fine. It's their choice."

So ultimately, he doesn't really consider there to be any ethical issues with proprietary software.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 11:24 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

The ethical problems have to do with copyright itself. It was one thing when it applied to navigational charts and some books, but it's a monster that has gotten out of control.

But it's difficult to convince people of this since it's asking too much for people to view the world as possibly ever being different then it is now.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 12:22 UTC (Wed) by gowen (guest, #23914) [Link]

Well, that's consistent with the idea that -- absent any coercion -- all licenses are ethically neutral. You sign up to those licences whose terms you're ok with, you reject the ones that you're not ok with. And you are bound by those terms, and not the moral expectations of anyone else.

That's freedom in the sense with which economists will be familiar. Your interpretation may vary.