Hi Dominik... There has been a lot of discussion about whether the ideas expressed in the "ethical license" are really ethical or not (is it ethical to kill a person? Is it ethical to not kill a person who is directly threatening yourself or your children? Etc.)
This kind of thing is, unfortunately, a morass from which there is very little chance of breaking free. It is _this_ aspect that I want to address: you have lamented that this has become politicized but you must take full responsibility for that yourself: there is no politics here except in this context. Indeed, my understanding was that this was the entire purpose: you wanted to politicize FVWM to keep it from being used in a manner which you disagreed with. The problem is that ethics are not absolute, and they are not even universal. What if some other FVWM developer is fervently opposed to abortion, looks at your license and decides that the underlying theme of non-violence should also apply to the unborn. They add their own "ethical license" stating that FVWM should not be used by abortion clinics or other medical facilities that practice abortion, nor should it be used by facilities like Planned Parenthood that provide counseling that includes abortion as a viable alternative. Next, another FVWM developer adds another "ethical license" which is against all forms of suicide, including doctor-assisted suicide for terminal patients in great pain, and doesn't allow FVWM to be used by any facility which supports or even researches this. Then someone adds an "ethical license" stating that FVWM should not be used by any group that does not support the "war on drugs"--or that it should not be used by any group that _does_ support the "war on drugs". Next we might have licenses regarding homosexuality, or adoption by homosexual couples, or pro/con gay marriage, or whatever. And so it goes. I generally consider "slippery slope" arguments as somewhat weak, but I believe this is a real danger here. Once we accept that an open source software project is a legitimate platform for political (or, call it "ethical" if you prefer) agendas, where does it stop? You may say "well, it's not a real license so people can just ignore it". But people who are really ethical _won't_ just ignore it: if they are ethical they will feel bound to not use the software if they don't agree with _all_ of the ideas espoused in the "ethical license(s)". With enough of these sorts of licenses there may well be almost no one who happens to hold all of these ethical beliefs simultaneously. So what do you have then? Ironically enough, what you probably have is that only people who are _not_ ethical will be using your software... to me this seems counterproductive in the extreme. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paul D. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> HASMAT--HA Software Mthds & Tools "Please remain calm...I may be mad, but I am a professional." --Mad Scientist ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- These are my opinions---Nortel Networks takes no responsibility for them. -- Visit the official FVWM web page at <URL:http://www.fvwm.org/>. To unsubscribe from the list, send "unsubscribe fvwm-workers" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To report problems, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
