Re: is free, open source software ethical?

This is wildly off-topic, but it's something I've been thinking about 
lately.

Ron Garret wrote:

[...]

> Friendship is an analog relationship, not a binary one.  It is likely 
> that your good deed strengthened your friendship in ways that will 
> provide you some direct benefit down the road.  Maybe she'll now do you 
> a favor that she might otherwise not have done.  Maybe she'll go out 
> with you now.  Maybe your good deed moved her closer to the point where 
> she wants to bear your children.  Like it or not, if you're human 
> chances are good that your brain is hardwired to want that, and 
> improving your chances of getting laid is a benefit to you that is not 
> fundamentally different from improving the quality of the food you eat 
> or the shelter you live in or the clothes you wear or the car you drive.

There is nothing about evolution or "the selfish gene" that precludes 
genuine altruism. An altruistic act can contribute to the survival of a 
gene for altruism if the beneficiary of that altruistic act happens to 
contain the same genetic propensity for altruism that the benefactor 
has. The more closely related beneficiary and benefactor are, the more 
likely this is to be the case, but there's no reason that evolution 
precludes a propensity for genuine solidarity and altruism at the level 
of species. (There's also nothing that precludes a propensity for 
aggression at the level of species, which is why humans have such a 
frustrating capacity for both.)

The point is that people act not because they expect the action to 
benefit themselves specifically. People act because they expect the 
action to bring about a result that they value. There is no reason that 
this can't be "a better world" in a genuinely altruistic sense.

In other words, of course there are people who "free" their code because 
they value in a genuinely altruistic sense the result of doing so. 
(How's that for bringing it back on topic?)

-thant