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>so they do have a certain moral obligation to give back. What moral obligation are you talking about? There's no moral obligation for anyone using open source

• ObviousScience 11y ago
  If you're referring to software license terms, you're making a legal, not a moral argument.
• Stratoscope 11y ago
  There's an interesting nuance in the phrase "a certain moral obligation." In my understanding, it's a fairly weak statement [1], somewhat akin to "People will think more highly of you if you do this thing, and less highly if you don't." Contrast this with "they have a moral obligation." To me that is a much stronger statement: "People will think you are behaving in an immoral way if you do not do this thing." It's funny how adding the word "certain" to the phrase actually makes it a less certain, gentler way of putting things - quite the opposite of the literal meaning of the word. Put another way, I could imagine a law being passed to enforce "a moral obligation". But it seems much less likely to have a law enforcing something described as "a certain moral obligation." [1] I mean "weak" in the sense of not being a strong claim of obligation, not "weak" in the sense that the phrase is a poor way to say something.
  • ams6110 11y ago
    Right, I just meant in a "pay it forward" or "the decent thing to do" sense.