În 2013-12-22 12:09, aaz...@mail.ru a scris:
Excuse me, but did you ever heard of so-called "situational ethics"? There aren't absolute unethical actions.
There are a lot of examples of absolute unethical actions. Human slavery is one of them and it's forbidden by international human rights treaties and it's fought against it all over the world.
For example, I consider meat is unethical in my current situation.
I don't care what you do in your personal life, nor should you about what I do in mine. If I use public software libraries to develop a piece of software to fit my needs and I am its sole user because I don't release it to the public (nor I give it to acquaintances), it's no business of yours. It doesn't affect you that I write and use my not-released software. Free or nonfree labels don't apply for this piece of software.
But if I would need meat for my survival, then I will eat it. Even if it will be a human meat.
This will not justify cannibalism, which is an unethical practice by all standards.
And nobody can force anybody to take so-called "ethical job".
No individual can, but a law can. Many states consider prostitution to be unethical and the forbid it by laws. Regardless of what you think (that is ethical or not), it is forbidden by law. And the policemen are enforcing the law. The same goes with drug trafficking.
However, because there is no such a law and proprietary software distribution is legal, nobody can ask policemen to give fines to software companies for restricting users and to take into custody proprietary software managers and developers.
But what we in the free software community is to blame people who help enslaving users. We need to condemn all proprietary software practices. And we should never take proprietary software developers' side, like they are some poor computer scientists who only follow orders because otherwise they (and their family) would starve and die of hunger.
That is her/his personal decision.
Her/his personal decision affects other people, because (s)he is working on user subjugating software. It can be the personal decision of a President or a Prime Minister to declare war on a neighbouring country and the law can allow this, because it's her/his right by Constitution. But this doesn't mean it doesn't affect tens, hundreds of millions of people and that is ethical, instead of negotiating and peacefully settling any differences between the two countries.
Beside, meat is ethical in YOUR opinion.
I raise a sheep and sacrifice it and eat it. It doesn't affect you. Whether what I am doing is ethical or not for you, it doesn't hurt you I eat my sheep.
I write a piece of software for myself and I use it all my life without releasing it. It doesn't affect you. Whether what I am doing is ethical or not for you, it doesn't hurt you I use my software only for myself.
In contrast, if I write a piece of software and I make it public (I release it) under a proprietary license and you use my software, it affects you. I am unethical and you can clearly see that, because I don't allow you to install it on multiple machines and to modify it to better serve your needs. My personal decision is affecting you, me being an unethical software developer hurts you as a my software user. I have control over you and we are both humans. You depend only on me and that's wrong. I am anti-social with you and you can see that.
I have only one choice. I must convince you that giving up meat will fit your egotistical interests. For example, "You know, in average vegetarians have longer lifespan than meat-eaters, blah-blah-blah".
Right. And if that's why I would avoid meat, it doesn't mean I would never eat meat again. I can let go to 10 additional minutes of my life for a special occasion, like at a dinner with my parents whom I didn't see for a whole year or a reunion with my former colleagues from university whom I didn't see for 10 years. The same goes with alcohol, tobacco and so on.
Practical reasons (even if they are true) are not enough for a human being to not do something, like eating meat or using/developing proprietary software. It's not a strong enough reason, because we humans don't always follow doctors' orders. But we certainly don't want to live with the guilt of doing something unethical which will haunt us for the rest of our lives, like eating human meat. That is because we have conscience.
That is also true for FSF-lovers movement.
Don't forget you are using one of free software movement's forums of a FSF-endorsed free distribution of GNU+Linux. You are using this forum to attack the reason while Trisquel is developed, to challenge the free software philosophy and to turn our users' interest away from the free software movement to the "open source" camp.
You are directly and shamelessly working publicly against the free software movement using it's own communication channels. I am sure you are aware of that.
If you want to change the world, then you must swallow your pride and try to convince developers of proprietary software that FLOSS more profitable for them.
That might not be true and not even generally true, and you have no way of proving such a statement. And like in the case of eating meat, this might convince proprietary software developers to prefer developing free software rather than continue developing proprietary software, but it doesn't mean they will stop restricting users and never look back. What usually happens (and you can see this in many if not most of projects that call themselves "open source"), they distribute proprietary software along with free software. It is actually the reason why Trisquel was forked from Debian and later from Ubuntu and the reason why this forum you are using against the movement even exist.
So it doesn't mean they will stop what they did in the past. Especially when your doctor discovers you have cancer which has developed in the last 5 years, although half of your life you have been a vegetarian (let's say, for 20 years). Or especially when you are forced to declare bankruptcy after trying for 5 years to make a profit with free software.
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