software ethics

[Marty]

     Actually, software ethics, really part of marketplace ethics, (and also
"professional ethics") is much more complicated than what we have seen
discussed on the net to date.

     The basic problem is that it costs money to develop software.  (Even at
a university.  Student labor may be equal to slave labor if you can get
students to do the work as part of programming class assignments, but the
power company still gets paid for the electricity.)

     The traditional approach to doing something that costs money is:

     1) Get the money by donations - This is how public TV works
     2) Let the government fund it (I. E. taxes and deficits)
     3) Let the private sector do it.

     Each of these methods leads to a different set of problems.  What we
have been discussing so far is the third option.  The motivation for the
private sector to put money up in front is an expectation of money returned
for the effort, what the economists call "Return on investment."

     A problem which makes software unique (as we are all painfully aware)
is that the cost of producing it in the first place greatly (frequently by
several orders of magnitude) exceeds the cost of duplicating it.

     The various schemes for "protecting" software investments, including
non disclosure agreements, patents, copy rights, trade secrets, etc are ways
in which the provider of the software is attempting to protect that
investment.

     The ethical problems are how much return the developer is entitled to,
what constitutes "intellectual property", and how that investment can be
guarenteed.  I don't have answers (or even well formulated questions) on
these topics, but I would like to see this discussion continue, hopefully in
a different forum.

     However, regardless of your stand on the rightness or wrongness of a
particular protection scheme, there is a simple "rule of thumb" ethic which
I believe in:

     If you agree (in the legal sense) to abide by someone's groundrules, by
signing a license agreement, a non disclosure agreement, or whatever, than
you are ethically bound to that agreement.

     Pragmatically, this means that if you don't agree with something, don't
sign it, and accept the consequences.  Fight to change the way things are
done, but don't subvert them.

Marty