On Tue, 30 Jul 2002 15:45:48 -0400 (EDT)
Russell McOrmond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
| The Linux / Open Source / Free Software community is considerably
| more diverse than these groups, IMNSHO. There would be much more
| agreement on what is 'ethical' and what is not, and thus not a
| huge amount of time spent debating this.
|
|
|
|Example:
|
| Is it "ethical" to take software that is Free Software, and make
| a proprietary derivative of it?
|
| A GPL-type person would say it is not ethical, and points at the
| GPL anti-theft provisions (Theft being "making free software
| proprietary").
|
|
| A BSD-type person would say it is not only totally ethical, it is
|encouraged by the BSD license and is considered pragmatic. They
|consider the GNU-type persons restriction of GPL'd software from
|usage by Software Manufacturing to be unethical.
|
Well such issues are quite relativistic. Your judgement of who is
right and who is wrong depends simply upon what set of principles
you subscribe to initially. This is 'ethics' being used as a
political tool and is reminicent of religious wars in Europe. That
is not exactly professional. In the real world, an IT professional
may be called upon to support many licences, so it's important to
provide an objective platform or standpoint that is ideology neutral
as well as vendor and distro neutral and allows a professional to do
their job without getting involved in such 'concerns'. Remember few
flame wars are ever resolved successfully. That's not where we want
to go.
bill
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