4 ms·

> Software engineers with 0 moral and ethical qualms I would like to challenge this. The ethical problem comes from this two facts: they had code which disable

> Software engineers with 0 moral and ethical qualms I would like to challenge this. The ethical problem comes from this two facts: they had code which disabled the vehicle in certain conditions AND this was not communicated in the manuals/contracts. The two together is what is extremely dubious. If you implement a time based expiry system, and tell about it to the customers that I think is fair. The customer might of course opt to not buy the equipment under those terms, or only pay a significantly reduced fee, but that is just business. And it might be good business for both participants if everything is well documented and transparent, and these restrictions are reflected in the price, and everyone enters into the agreement with full knowledge and consent. Why does this matter: Look at it from the developer’s perspective. Imagine that they are told by their bosses that they need to implement technological measures to disable the product when the licence expires. Would developing that be unethical? I don’t think so. It becomes unethical at the later point when the train operator is not told about this. How much of that is in or out of the view of the developers is an other question. I’m not saying this is what happened. Clearly the gps based lockdown is not consistent with this story even under the most charitable interpretation. Something is fishy here and needs investigating. (The kind of investigation where the police with a warrant takes the repo and the communications of the company, and interviews everyone separately to figure out who did what and when, and who known what and when.) But while the overall conduct of the company appears to be unethical, it is not necessarily true that the software engineers in question were also unethical. It depends on what they did know, and what they were asked to deliver.

RecycledEle 3y ago
> If you implement a time based expiry system, and tell about it to the customers that I think is fair. I remember a discussion of ethics on HN a few weeks or months back. I said there are actions that promote the common good, actions that do not affect the common good, and actions that harm the common good. I believe you view of "business" is in the category of harming the public good.
_heimdall 3y ago
They weren't selling software licenses here, they were selling a very real piece of hardware. It would be ethical to disable noncritical software updates under some time based constraints, its completely unreasonably to disable the use of the hardware all together. The customer bought it, that's their hardware to use however they wish. It would be completely unacceptable to me if an auto manufacturer baked in a time lock in a car I purchased. Heck, Apple got slapped for appearing to throttle performance based on age. Why is it reasonable for a train manufacturer to pull this stunt? To be clear, plausible deniability is also a big gray area when it comes to moral or ethical questions. It a timelock in the software seems unusual, engineers aren't off the hook simply because they didn't ask. If they did push back or ask for an explanation and were given false answers, sure they likely didn't do anything most would consider immoral. But if they just wrote the time lock because it was in a spec and didn't ask why a train should include a time bomb? Totally unethical in my book.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > They weren't selling software licenses here, they were selling a very real piece of hardware. I don’t know. I didn’t read the contract. Neither did you I suspect nor did the developers. Jet engines are leased by the hour. Yes they are very real pieces of hardware bolted to your airplane. That has nothing to do with the business model. Why can’t the same be true for trains? Even if I would know how trains are usually sold/purchased, which I don’t, I could be convinced by a boss that we are trying a different model. Why is this important? Two reasons: if your mental model is that these kind of things are done by “unethical developers” then you are not looking for the real culprits, and your interventions trying to prevent such things will be inefective.
  - Eisenstein 3y ago
    Do they turn off the jet engines if they don't pay, or do they send them a bill? There is a huge difference. Also, writing it in a contract doesn't make it ethical or even legal. Just because someone writes it in a license agreement doesn't mean that we as a society should blindly accept it. We don't allow people to sell lots of things, why should we just say 'well it was in the license' because someone tried to sell 'being able to have turn off your own passenger train for more than 10 days'?
smegger001 3y ago
There are reasons you might legitimately geofence your product, to.prevent them being stoken a war spoils like the Ukrainian tractors and harvesters were by Russia last year, or to prevent them being used in a sanctioned country like Iran. I could see a upper level manager looking at a geofence to made for complying with sanctions and turning around and using it as a anticompetitive tool to prevent third party repairs without a second thought.

RecycledEle 3y ago

> If you implement a time based expiry system, and tell about it to the customers that I think is fair. I remember a discussion of ethics on HN a few weeks or months back. I said there are actions that promote the common good, actions that do not affect the common good, and actions that harm the common good. I believe you view of "business" is in the category of harming the public good.

_heimdall 3y ago

They weren't selling software licenses here, they were selling a very real piece of hardware. It would be ethical to disable noncritical software updates under some time based constraints, its completely unreasonably to disable the use of the hardware all together. The customer bought it, that's their hardware to use however they wish. It would be completely unacceptable to me if an auto manufacturer baked in a time lock in a car I purchased. Heck, Apple got slapped for appearing to throttle performance based on age. Why is it reasonable for a train manufacturer to pull this stunt? To be clear, plausible deniability is also a big gray area when it comes to moral or ethical questions. It a timelock in the software seems unusual, engineers aren't off the hook simply because they didn't ask. If they did push back or ask for an explanation and were given false answers, sure they likely didn't do anything most would consider immoral. But if they just wrote the time lock because it was in a spec and didn't ask why a train should include a time bomb? Totally unethical in my book.

krisoft 3y ago
> They weren't selling software licenses here, they were selling a very real piece of hardware. I don’t know. I didn’t read the contract. Neither did you I suspect nor did the developers. Jet engines are leased by the hour. Yes they are very real pieces of hardware bolted to your airplane. That has nothing to do with the business model. Why can’t the same be true for trains? Even if I would know how trains are usually sold/purchased, which I don’t, I could be convinced by a boss that we are trying a different model. Why is this important? Two reasons: if your mental model is that these kind of things are done by “unethical developers” then you are not looking for the real culprits, and your interventions trying to prevent such things will be inefective.
- Eisenstein 3y ago
  Do they turn off the jet engines if they don't pay, or do they send them a bill? There is a huge difference. Also, writing it in a contract doesn't make it ethical or even legal. Just because someone writes it in a license agreement doesn't mean that we as a society should blindly accept it. We don't allow people to sell lots of things, why should we just say 'well it was in the license' because someone tried to sell 'being able to have turn off your own passenger train for more than 10 days'?

smegger001 3y ago

There are reasons you might legitimately geofence your product, to.prevent them being stoken a war spoils like the Ukrainian tractors and harvesters were by Russia last year, or to prevent them being used in a sanctioned country like Iran. I could see a upper level manager looking at a geofence to made for complying with sanctions and turning around and using it as a anticompetitive tool to prevent third party repairs without a second thought.