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CPAs, Lawyers, Civil Engineers, ... Basically every job that is called a "profession" is explicitly expected to refuse their paymaster's demands when they are

• spacemadness 3y ago
  Or regulated areas like medical device design/firmware. You may end up in court and needing to defend yourself if you go along with business leaders who think ethics are just a blockade to profits.
• kazinator 3y ago
  Yes, and there would be clear areas where programmers should do the same thing. Say you are are employed by some firm that does programming for banks, and you're told to put in some hack to take salami slices out of transactions. You're being asked to break the law; if you participate, you could go to jail. There can exist code whose only purpose, only effect is to perpetrate some harm or break the law. This article is saying that even if you hear that some innocent code of yours is being used in an evil program, you are obligated to do something. I mean, that even goes against free software. If I put out some innocent GPL or BSD licensed thing, and someone uses it for evil, and then I try to use my copyright holder position to wrangle the use out of their hands, it is no longer free software. Oh, and don't forget that non-free, closed-source software is what is unethical in some circles.