Thorsten,
I think you are over analyzing these guys and giving them far too much
credit. I think the truth is simpler. They only make sales by misleading
the customer into thinking they are getting something else. They cast a
wide net of shady tactics. So the situation (I believe) is closer to
Gene's perspective. But we all see things from our own perspectives which
can lead to slightly different conclusions and that's fair, and fine --
these guys weave a complex web in part to confuse, distract, insulate one
part from another, and make it hard to pin anyone down on anything
specific. Yet the sum total of their actions is a scam. In this case I
think the simpler, and more obvious conclusion is actually more correct. :-)
Curt.
On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Renk Thorsten <thorsten.i.r...@jyu.fi>wrote:
> > We haven't
> > been able to pin them down on a specific technical violation of the gpl,
> > but that doesn't mean they are legitimate, honorable, and ethical.
>
> > They're immoral scammers, plain and simple.
>
> It galls me to speak up for FlightProSim, but such statements are, as far
> as I am concerned, not okay. I think we have to clearly distinguish between
> two levels here - what we personally consider ethical behaviour, and how
> the societies we live in codify the sum of many such personal judgements in
> norms which apply to all of us beyond the personal level, i.e. what is
> legal.
>
> Fraud is a crime. In essence, calling someone a scammer is calling him a
> criminal. There's a principle in criminal justice which reads "Presumed
> Innocent until Proven Guilty". It means, if you suspect someone being a
> criminal, you have to gather evidence, take it to court and then a judge (a
> jury) decides if someone is guilty of a crime or not. It also means, if you
> haven't been able to pin them down on anything yet, you have to presume
> them legally innocent because you could not prove them guilty.
>
> I know the principle is sometimes difficult to swallow, because, heck, we
> all know they are guilty as hell, let's not get hung up with questions of
> procedure... That's just the digital equivalent of a lynch mob. It's not
> enough that you are personally convinced that someone is guilty, you
> actually need to have a real case and see it through in court. And there's
> a good reason for that. FlightGear is not a digital lynch mob.
>
> Now, the following depends on the country you are in, but in many places I
> know you are on the wrong side of the law if you claim someone is a
> criminal when there's no court decision that actually says so. So in
> calling someone a scammer without a legal 'guilty' verdict to back you up,
> you might be exposing yourself or the project to legal action from
> FlightProSim.
>
> That's my view on the legal side of it.
>
> As far as ethical behaviour is concerned, I think that's rather
> subjective. Just one more example, since Curt brought this up:
>
> > It is a fairly long stretch to say that these guys offer a legitimate
> > service, or meat the expectations their advertising creates.
>
> One of the things I consider unethical is setting up a situation that is
> suggestive, i.e. from which the other is led to a conclusion I know to be
> wrong. That's actually perfectly legal, a lot of advertizing business is
> done based on this principle - you can't legally lie outright to the viewer
> of a commercial, but you can lead him to draw a false conclusion himself.
>
> Now, in the screenshot gallery advertizing Flightgear 2.6, we had
> precisely that - screenshots showing the skydome shader with the horizon
> hidden by mountains or the cockpit. As far as I am concerned, a screenshot
> advertizing the simulation should show a more or less typical situation,
> not something that typically looks bad (because the horizon never matched)
> but can be engineered to look good by hiding the horizon. So the 2.6
> gallery contains images which in my ethics book are false advertizing and
> hence unethical since they inevitably lead the viewer to the conclusion
> that he can expect the skydome shader to work without major graphical
> aretefacts, which is in fact not true because you can typically see the
> horizon during flight, i.e. you typically see rendering artefacts in 2.6.
>
> I don't mean to imply by this that Curt is an unethical person, but just
> that we see in this case that we evidently do not apply the same standards
> here as to what 'false advertizing' is.
>
> So, I rest my case here - please consider carefully if you really want to
> make any legally relevant statements, and if not, if your own ethical
> standards are so certain that you can really expect everyone to share them.
> Personally, I don't like FlightProSim &Co, but after looking at a lot of
> evidence, working through GPL and investigating their website, I have
> decided that I have just to put up with them.
>
> Best,
>
> * Thorsten
>
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--
Curtis Olson:
http://www.atiak.com - http://aem.umn.edu/~uav/
http://www.flightgear.org - http://gallinazo.flightgear.org
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