Wow, this whole discussion, and the subsequent thread opened by William have really blown my mind a little bit.
I disagree with most of the objections raised by Nathann. I have to say that the impression I got from them at the beginning have changed as the discussion has evolved and his points have been clarified. I also dislike his (sometimes aggresive, sometimes disrispectful) style when writing in this group. But I really respect the fact that he takes a moral position about what he considers to be an ethical problem. And I am really happy that he has raised these questions, and that we have had this discusion. As Rogaway [1] recently stated, it is important that we, scientists, take into consideration the moral implications of our work; so I am literally delighted to see a discussion about the morality of what we do in sage-devel. At the beginning, I thought that the main problem that Nathan was pointing to had to do with the money. The fact that somebody (he particularizes in William, but also makes some comments about the OpenDreamKit grant) makes money using the Sage code was -or I thought it was- thecore moral problem. I don't agree with that view, for a couple of reasons: 1) All Sage code is GPL'ed, which means not only that everybody has the legal right to use it as apart as a business model (provided the conditions of the GPL are respected); but also that the people that wrote that code have given an explicit permission to do so. The fact that the use of Sage code in SMC is legal is not the consequence of some loophole in the law. It is the consequence of the explicit permission of the code writers to everybody that wants to use the code with basically the only condition of not relicensing it. That clearly includes the kind of use that SMC does, so I definitely see no moral problem there. William can use my code in SMC because I explicitely gave him (and everybody else) permission to use it in that way (and many other possible ways too). Same applyes for the rest of the developpers. 2) If we to to a lower level in the moral discussion, and leaving law aside, we get to the point of the morality of copyright and intellectual property in general: which are the possible ethical uses of other people's immaterial creations? The most extended line of thought (and it is the one in which the copyright laws -and hence the software licenses- are based) is that such a use is ethical as long as it is done with the permission of the author. The author has some kind of natural right to decide who and how can use his/her creations. I disagree with this view (and I know i am probably alone in this). The idea that somebody in the other side of the world cannot make use of a idea just because I had that idea before, and wrote it down sounds ridiculous to me. The idea or property is bounded to the limitation of the objects of that property: we need a criterion to decide who does an apple belong to because it can only be eaten once. In the immaterial world of mind creations, there is not such limitation, so the concept of property really makes no sense: we only accept it because it is what we are used to. Ideas should be freely shared and used. As should software, texts, songs and any other immaterial goods. We, as a society, can decide to put some regulations on this in the basis that they would cause people to behave in a way that we consider to be better for us in the long term; but that is not based on moral anymore: that is based on convenience (which might be a good idea, but it is not a moral mandate). So, from my point of view in this aspect, there wouldn't be any moral problem in the use of Sage code that SMC does either. At some point, Nathann rephrased his complains, and then I realized that I hadn't correctly understood his reasons. He claims that the main problem is the fact that the decission of starting SMC was taken without considering the sage developper's community. I think he is partly right about this: it could have been a better idea to try this step as a collegiate effort... or maybe it could have never work, who knows. I don't think William did something wrong (as I said, I don't think he needs anybody's permission to do what he is doing, both from a legal and moral point of view). In fact, I am very grateful to William for taking such a huge personal risk just for trying to make Sage better in the long run. But I can why somebody cannot like this move, and consider it some kind of treason to the Sage developper community. I am kind of sad to hear that Nathann will leave. I will not try to convince him to come back: he is an adult that seems to have thought carefully about this decission. Besides, I also can understand why he could consider such an attempt as a proof of how developpers here are just treated as free workforce. So I will respect his decission, but still I consider it as an important loss for this community. Not only for all the hard work he has done, but also because I think it is important for us all to hear different points of view. Even if we all disagree with what Nathann says, it is important that someone says it. It is important to force ourselves to at least think about it, and debate. And yes, I too think that in past discussions Nathann has been too aggressive and that it might have hurt some feelings, which I don't like at all. But still, I think his views are valuable. I just wish he had expressed them in a less acid way. [1] http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/papers/moral.html Note: I used the thirthd person when referring to Nathann because this is intended to be a personal reflection directed to everybody in general and not one person in particular. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sage-devel" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to sage-devel+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
