Re: is free, open source software ethical?

In article <n7idnVtH674MfFPanZ2dnUVZ8gydnZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 Richard Heathfield <rjh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

> Ah, so an *irrational* person is someone who holds a view different to 
> yours?

No.  An irrational person is one who persists in a view in the face of 
overwhelming evidence to the contrary.  All creationists are irrational.  
(I don't know that you are a creationist, but you are strongly hinting 
that you are.)

> Of course the Sun revolves around the Earth - to someone who is actually

> standing on the earth. And to someone who is standing (or vaporising) on

> the Sun, the Earth goes round the Sun. And to someone hanging around 
> somewhere off to stage left, the Earth and Sun are both revolving about 
> their centre of mass. And the thing is that all three of them are right.

But some of them are more right than others.

> To deny the existence of altruism may be an attempt to justify one's own

> selfishness, or it may be a genuine but misguided view of reality, or it

> may simply be a consequence of over-indulging in reductionist
philosophy. 
> Whatever one's reason for denying altruism, one simply cuts oneself off 
> from a really important part of being a human.
> 
> Some people really do write software for other people without any
thought 
> of gain.

I doubt that very much.  If such people exist they are exceedingly rare.

> A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me to help out with a 
> computer problem she was having. I took a laptop with me, and ended up 
> fixing her problem by writing about 300 lines of C on my laptop, copying

> the resulting binary over to her machine, and executing it there. That 
> program was written purely in my friend's interest (and in fact I didn't

> even bother to keep a copy). And there's nothing particularly special 
> about me. Lots of people write programs in the interests of other
people. 
> To pretend otherwise seems a bit silly to me.

Of course people write programs (and do all manner of things) in the 
interests of other people.  But for it to be altruism they must get 
nothing in return.  But you *are* getting something in return: 
friendship.

rg