5 ms·

Proprietary software is inherently unethical, so I support anyone teaching people how to pirate it. YouTube did the predictable thing, but not the right thing.

akerl_ 6y ago
At what point in the process of making software does proprietary software become unethical? If I open a restaurant and sell food, but don’t publish my recipes, that isn’t unethical? If I make software, and I choose to offer it for money but not offer the source, what is unethical about my behavior?
- ddevault 6y ago
  >At what point in the process of making software does proprietary software become unethical? The start. >If I open a restaurant and sell food, but don’t publish my recipes, that isn’t unethical? No - this is also unethical. >If I make software, and I choose to offer it for money but not offer the source, what is unethical about my behavior? If software runs on the user's hardware or uses the user's data, I have a right to know how it works, to modify it to do something different, and to share those modifications with others. I hold the copyright to those modifications, and I should even be able to sell it to others. The software is just information at that point, and information is inherently valueless - it's the creation and distribution of information that costs money. And money itself, remember, is an abstraction for value, not valuable in and of itself. Just because something is a viable business model does not make it ethically agreeable. Note for recipes that restaurants are required to share some information, like ingredient lists and nutritional content. This doesn't go far enough, but even at this level of transparency, the food industry is held more accountable than software.
  - akerl_ 6y ago
    I think it’s clear that we have fundamentally differing opinions on what constitutes “ethics”. If I make something, it’s perfectly ethical for me to decide my criteria for giving it to somebody else. If the cost I impose or the restrictions I require are too onerous, nobody is going to agree to enter into a transaction with me. But if they do, they’ve agreed to pay my cost and abide by my terms. The same is true of meals at a restaurant or sale of land or any other societal transaction. As a consumer of food, I can take as a personal stance the ideal that I’ll only eat food if I can know the recipe, but restaurants aren’t obligated to change their offering to account for me, any more than I’m obligated to eat at their establishments.
    - ddevault 6y ago
      You're free to sell software at any cost the recipient is willing to pay, at least such that it squares with your concience. However, if you don't sell the source code with it, I consider that unethical. Land is a finite resource with intrinsic value, not the same thing. So is the meal itself. Recipes are different. We have social obligations. That's what being a society is.
      - sigzero 6y ago
        No, not even close. It is 100% ethical to sell software but not the source to it. It isn't a social obligation of any kind to do so. You may choose to do so but you can't force that choice on others.
        heyoni 6y ago
        Not every ethical notion needs to be legislated. I don’t think anyone is suggesting everyone enforced to publish all source code, however, not releasing source code can be perceived as unethical...or shady AF if that makes more sense. The fact is, it may protect against piracy but practically all consumer software nowadays is doing something on your device that you wouldn’t approve of. The only realistic way for a user to know how their resources are being used would be to look at the source code.
      - spondyl 6y ago
        Hmm, just to try and understand your view a little better, it sounds by that logic that toy makers should also provide technical schematics when they sell toys so that consumers could add or fix elements of what they bought?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - tarruda 6y ago
    This is an interesting POV I hadn't considered before, thanks for sharing. I will share my own view on the matter. I can see two main reasons for business not distributing source code: The first is to prevent users from using it without paying. If someone acquires a copy of the source code, they can redistribute at will at no cost. For some business models this might be fine, internet services being an example. "Normal" users would prefer paying for just using such services, instead of maintaining the necessary infrastructure themselves. But what about desktop applications or other software that just runs in the user's device? If all the user needs to use the software is a download link, there would be no tangible incentives to pay for it. There are other incentives, such as helping maintain a software that is useful to you, but most users don't grasp the concept of software maintenance and wouldn't see that as a good investment. The second reason is to prevent low barrier competition. As you said yourself, creation and distribution of software costs money, so consider this: Software company "A" spends months developing a desktop application which it plans to sell for $30, which will be enough to get initial investment back after selling 1000 copies. Since the product is a desktop application, and the company is using a free software licence, they distribute the source code with the compiled version. In this scenario, what's to prevent software company "B" from taking the source, rebranding/recompiling and launching a competing version with the same features for $10? In a purely ethical world, everyone would do the "right thing" and this scenario wouldn't exist. In our world, incentive-based systems are used to keep chaos from taking over. Currently I'm an intermediate Linux user and can get by with only free software, but that was not always the case. My first contact with computers happened before I was 10 when my father had brought a 386 and installed MS-DOS and later windows 3.1. In the early 2000's I began my software development career using Microsoft technologies such as .NET and VBA. Sure Linux existed at the time, but it was much less accessible than it is today (especially to someone who mostly used MS products so far). Eventually I released myself from "Microsoft prison", but I had to use MS products in order to access the internet and acquire the necessary knowledge. Today I wonder if the free internet would have developed so quickly if it was not proprietary software developed by "unethical" software companies and sold to end users. Free software is more ethical, but initially it was only for the technical elite at universities. PS: I'm a big fan of your software (been using sr.ht since the start). Keep up the good work!
    - 6y ago
- iib 6y ago
  If you want to see some other opinion about your exact analogy, Richard Stallman--one of the most influential thinkers of the free software world--gave an answer to the same question, at large [1]. As a summary: - Output from a proprietary program (in this case it would be food) is not unethical. - The _user_ must be free, not the developer. The users of the recipes are the cooks, not the customers. Cooks are free to change and distribute recipes. There is no recipe that a cook can't make, because in this case, the cook is the executant, not some computer. There are no compiled recipes. - If there were cooking robots that would cook compiled recipes that would not be free, he would be against it, as he is with proprietary software. [1] https://youtu.be/jUibaPTXSHk?t=914 https://youtu.be/jUibaPTXSHk?t=914
latexr 6y ago
> Proprietary software is inherently unethical, so I support anyone teaching people how to pirate it. If you consider proprietary software to be inherently unethical, how does it follow that pirating it is to be encouraged? Shouldn’t you be against the usage of such software, regardless of how it was obtained?
- ddevault 6y ago
  I consider piracy to be a form of civil disobedience. Why shouldn't we capture the value even if it would normally be sold to us in an unethical way? Personally, I don't use nonfree software, pirated or not, but I have no qualms with anyone who does.

akerl_ 6y ago

At what point in the process of making software does proprietary software become unethical? If I open a restaurant and sell food, but don’t publish my recipes, that isn’t unethical? If I make software, and I choose to offer it for money but not offer the source, what is unethical about my behavior?

ddevault 6y ago
>At what point in the process of making software does proprietary software become unethical? The start. >If I open a restaurant and sell food, but don’t publish my recipes, that isn’t unethical? No - this is also unethical. >If I make software, and I choose to offer it for money but not offer the source, what is unethical about my behavior? If software runs on the user's hardware or uses the user's data, I have a right to know how it works, to modify it to do something different, and to share those modifications with others. I hold the copyright to those modifications, and I should even be able to sell it to others. The software is just information at that point, and information is inherently valueless - it's the creation and distribution of information that costs money. And money itself, remember, is an abstraction for value, not valuable in and of itself. Just because something is a viable business model does not make it ethically agreeable. Note for recipes that restaurants are required to share some information, like ingredient lists and nutritional content. This doesn't go far enough, but even at this level of transparency, the food industry is held more accountable than software.
- akerl_ 6y ago
  I think it’s clear that we have fundamentally differing opinions on what constitutes “ethics”. If I make something, it’s perfectly ethical for me to decide my criteria for giving it to somebody else. If the cost I impose or the restrictions I require are too onerous, nobody is going to agree to enter into a transaction with me. But if they do, they’ve agreed to pay my cost and abide by my terms. The same is true of meals at a restaurant or sale of land or any other societal transaction. As a consumer of food, I can take as a personal stance the ideal that I’ll only eat food if I can know the recipe, but restaurants aren’t obligated to change their offering to account for me, any more than I’m obligated to eat at their establishments.
  - ddevault 6y ago
    You're free to sell software at any cost the recipient is willing to pay, at least such that it squares with your concience. However, if you don't sell the source code with it, I consider that unethical. Land is a finite resource with intrinsic value, not the same thing. So is the meal itself. Recipes are different. We have social obligations. That's what being a society is.
    - sigzero 6y ago
      No, not even close. It is 100% ethical to sell software but not the source to it. It isn't a social obligation of any kind to do so. You may choose to do so but you can't force that choice on others.
      - heyoni 6y ago
        Not every ethical notion needs to be legislated. I don’t think anyone is suggesting everyone enforced to publish all source code, however, not releasing source code can be perceived as unethical...or shady AF if that makes more sense. The fact is, it may protect against piracy but practically all consumer software nowadays is doing something on your device that you wouldn’t approve of. The only realistic way for a user to know how their resources are being used would be to look at the source code.
    - spondyl 6y ago
      Hmm, just to try and understand your view a little better, it sounds by that logic that toy makers should also provide technical schematics when they sell toys so that consumers could add or fix elements of what they bought?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tarruda 6y ago
  This is an interesting POV I hadn't considered before, thanks for sharing. I will share my own view on the matter. I can see two main reasons for business not distributing source code: The first is to prevent users from using it without paying. If someone acquires a copy of the source code, they can redistribute at will at no cost. For some business models this might be fine, internet services being an example. "Normal" users would prefer paying for just using such services, instead of maintaining the necessary infrastructure themselves. But what about desktop applications or other software that just runs in the user's device? If all the user needs to use the software is a download link, there would be no tangible incentives to pay for it. There are other incentives, such as helping maintain a software that is useful to you, but most users don't grasp the concept of software maintenance and wouldn't see that as a good investment. The second reason is to prevent low barrier competition. As you said yourself, creation and distribution of software costs money, so consider this: Software company "A" spends months developing a desktop application which it plans to sell for $30, which will be enough to get initial investment back after selling 1000 copies. Since the product is a desktop application, and the company is using a free software licence, they distribute the source code with the compiled version. In this scenario, what's to prevent software company "B" from taking the source, rebranding/recompiling and launching a competing version with the same features for $10? In a purely ethical world, everyone would do the "right thing" and this scenario wouldn't exist. In our world, incentive-based systems are used to keep chaos from taking over. Currently I'm an intermediate Linux user and can get by with only free software, but that was not always the case. My first contact with computers happened before I was 10 when my father had brought a 386 and installed MS-DOS and later windows 3.1. In the early 2000's I began my software development career using Microsoft technologies such as .NET and VBA. Sure Linux existed at the time, but it was much less accessible than it is today (especially to someone who mostly used MS products so far). Eventually I released myself from "Microsoft prison", but I had to use MS products in order to access the internet and acquire the necessary knowledge. Today I wonder if the free internet would have developed so quickly if it was not proprietary software developed by "unethical" software companies and sold to end users. Free software is more ethical, but initially it was only for the technical elite at universities. PS: I'm a big fan of your software (been using sr.ht since the start). Keep up the good work!
  - 6y ago
iib 6y ago
If you want to see some other opinion about your exact analogy, Richard Stallman--one of the most influential thinkers of the free software world--gave an answer to the same question, at large [1]. As a summary: - Output from a proprietary program (in this case it would be food) is not unethical. - The _user_ must be free, not the developer. The users of the recipes are the cooks, not the customers. Cooks are free to change and distribute recipes. There is no recipe that a cook can't make, because in this case, the cook is the executant, not some computer. There are no compiled recipes. - If there were cooking robots that would cook compiled recipes that would not be free, he would be against it, as he is with proprietary software. [1] https://youtu.be/jUibaPTXSHk?t=914 https://youtu.be/jUibaPTXSHk?t=914

latexr 6y ago

> Proprietary software is inherently unethical, so I support anyone teaching people how to pirate it. If you consider proprietary software to be inherently unethical, how does it follow that pirating it is to be encouraged? Shouldn’t you be against the usage of such software, regardless of how it was obtained?

ddevault 6y ago
I consider piracy to be a form of civil disobedience. Why shouldn't we capture the value even if it would normally be sold to us in an unethical way? Personally, I don't use nonfree software, pirated or not, but I have no qualms with anyone who does.