On Sun, Mar 30, 2003 at 09:08:48PM -0500, Paul Smith wrote: > 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.
[more examples deleted] > And so it goes. It should be clear by now that I would not object to more of these statements. Other people have the same right to do so as I have. > 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. That is all true if such a flood of statements would come. But as it is, I do not fear this possibility. People on this list have proven time and again that this kind of 'war' is extremely unlikely to happen. I also listen to everybody, and I try to make the "license" acceptable for as many people as possible without betraying its motivation. Bye Dominik ^_^ ^_^ -- 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]
