Re: is free, open source software ethical?

On 2008-03-04, Kaz Kylheku <kkylheku@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Mar 4, 10:34 am, Mark Tarver <dr.mtar...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> If the univerity is funded by government money, well, that is theft.
>
> Once we can can assign an unethical attribute the root node of an
> economic tree, there is no point in evaluating the ethics of the child
> nodes; the unethical property flows out from that root toward the
> leaves. Stolen money taints all derived transactions.

Interesting theory, but why limit it to money and other resources that
were stolen recently? For example, if a government (or an independant
conqueror) steals a vast quantity of land, gold, oil, and other valuable
natural resources through warfare (as various European countries did all
over the world starting with Columbus, and as the USA did in the 19th
Century and continues to do today), and then gives it to certain members
of its population, then isn't all the profit made from that theft, and the
profit made by reinvesting those profits, and the profits made by those
who inherited those profits in following generations, isn't all of it
ultimately derived from theft? That would place your root node in a place
that marks virtually all wealth in the "first world" countries as
stolen.

-- 
Microsoft Windows. Flaky and built to stay that way.