is free, open source software ethical?

On Tue, 04 Mar 2008 10:34:28 -0800, Mark Tarver wrote:

> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> be prosecuted under law.  It has been used and criticised as such on
> several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
> produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
> Standard Oil by undercutting.
>
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing to
> condemn closed source software as unethical.  Now here is a thought.  Is
> it rather *free software which is unethical* because the supplier is
> dumping a free product from the position of having a subsidy?

Is blogging (or posting to usenet) unethical because it is dumping a free
product where other suppliers (publishers of newspapers, journals,
magazines) have traditionally been able to charge a toll?

To what extent is programming and publishing free software different from
blogging or posting to usenet?

Different only in degree, or different in kind?

Is publishing a small modification or patch to an already freely
published source code something different, or more of the same?

I suspect that the correct answer depends on the specific details in any
case.

Cheers,

--
Andrew

Joost Diepenmaat wrote:
> Joost Diepenmaat <joost@zat.nl> writes:
>
> 
>
>
> Oh wait, I always get  with Ken Tilton. Never mind.
>

Understandable. My client-selected username on one contract was "kent"
(I'll let you guess their algorithm) so one of the other contractors
liked to address me as Clark. I always addressed him as "Lois". He
seemed to enjoy that.

hth, kenny

--
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"In the morning, hear the Way;
in the evening, die content!"
-- Confucius

Ken Tilton wrote:
>
>
> Mark Tarver wrote:
> 
>
>
> Imagine this*: http://www.geogebra.org/cms/
>
> Bartenders school, here I come...

Hang on... they use Java... Game on!

:)

kenny

--
http://smuglispweeny.blogspot.com/
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"In the morning, hear the Way;
in the evening, die content!"
-- Confucius

In article
<fe562cfa-f51e-4512-b088-7c2f08d4bebe@13g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>,
vishnu13@gmail.com wrote:
 
>
> Would you complain if the company was able to undercut its competitors
> due to a manufacturing/technological breakthrough (i.e., increased
> productivity)?

No, but in this case the product is comparable to the competitors, only
the price is lower.  My hypothetical was about INFERIOR products.

>
> Of course not.
>
> So why complain about a company that is able to undercut its
> competitors by  giving away money? Money is just a store of
> productivity. Why does it matter that the productivity gain was not
> made in the same industry/in the same time period/by the same
> company?

My complaint wasn't about the difference in industries, it was about the
fact that they're dumping CRAP.  And they're getting people to buy the
crap by selling it really cheaply compared to the good stuff.

> 
>
> No company can sell a product for more than what it is worth.

That's true in a free market.  If there's a monopoly, customers have
little choice -- pay what the company asks, or do without.

> If they try to sell it for more, they will draw competitors. And the
> competition need not be in the same industry.

But the advantage of having killed off all the competition is that it
will take time for new competitors to get up to speed.  When they do,
you go back into dumping mode, and kill them off again.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***

Mark Tarver said:

> Well, I'm playing black here.
>
> 1. Producing FOSS is OK (unlike dumping) because it is done with good
> intentions.
>
> Quote
> "What you call "dumping" was a medium term strategy for profit
> maximisation. Open Source is generally a "goodness of their hearts"
> phenomenon."
> Unquote
>
> This comes up most often as a defence of FOSS.  It is based on anti-
> consequentialism which states that it is the goodness of the intention
> that determines whether the action is right and not the goodness of
> the consequences (consequentialism).

Correct. An action can be "good" (well-intentioned) and yet unwise
("stupid"). Here, we're talking about ethics, which is to do with intent,
not consequences.

<snip>

> In this case if a person produces FOSS using tax money and is
> indifferent to the consequences of bankruptcy of a small private
> company who is trying to operate without that support, is his intent
> that noble?

Stop Right There. If a person produces *closed-source* software using tax
money, what changes?

<snip>

> The problem is that the FOSS can be so good that people never buy the
> better thing.Or the betterness of the better thing is not enough to
> tempt people to shell out. In case of point I have an excellent free
> cribbage program which means that I will never buy one.

And why should you? And why should anyone bother to waste their time
writing one, if what already exists is excellent? Let them write something
innovative instead.

> However one thing you've got to grasp about
> utilitarianism - *it is completely inconsistent with the idea of
> individual rights*.  An individual has no rights because the welfare
> of the majority must always prevail.  For that reason RMS denies the
> author of the software any rights over his own work.

If the author truly has rights over his own work, RMS (who, last time I
checked, wasn't world dictator) is not in a position to deny him those
rights. If someone *chooses* to GPL the fruit of their programming labour,
that is their choice. If I write some really spiffy software and then
choose *not* to share it with the world, that's allowed, even if a greater
good would be served by my sharing it.

> The doctrine that most people would accept is 'People have the right
> to do with their time as they please so long as others are not hurt by
> so doing'. The argument against FOSS is that people are hurt by so
> doing.

Let's just assume for a moment that you're right, and that you're hurting
me economically by writing free software because you might conceivably be
depriving me of customers (in the same way that if you write expensive
closed-source software, you might also be depriving me of customers). But
if you drive a car, you hurt me *directly* by poisoning the atmosphere
which I must breathe to live. The second hurt is far greater than the
first.

The existence of one evil is not a reason not to oppose the existence of
another, but it makes sense to favour using resources on tackling the
greater evil. So - are you about to give up your car so that I can breathe
freely? No? I thought not.

<snip>

> My argument is with 'free' not OS - but free is almost always OS too;
> however  ...

If you don't like the idea of free software, don't produce any and don't
use any. That's your right. I don't like the idea of expensive tat, so I
reserve the right not to use any, and I try not to produce any!

> Quote
> "The world does not owe software company shareholders a living. If
> software
> houses can't produce software that is sufficiently superior to free
> software to justify the price they charge, then they don't really
> deserve to succeed."
> Unquote
>
> Compare: if African farmers cannot compete against highly subsidised
> EC food, too bad for them.

That's a lousy example for several reasons:

1) If they can't sell their food to us, at least they can usefully eat it
themselves;
2) In fact they /can/ sell their food to us, because they sell the kind of
food we don't grow in Europe and yet are prepared to pay for;
1) The African economy was immorally plundered for booty and slaves over
hundreds of years - it's hard to compete when someone keeps bashing you
over the head and grabbing your wallet.

If that's the best you can do for the Dark Side, it's clear that your heart
isn't in it. You might want to grab an X-Wing and help us out here - we
could use a good pilot.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

Ron Garret said:

> So even Free Software is a
> market exchange, and its authors are compensated.  The only difference
> is that the compensation comes in a form other than cash because the
> authors of Free Software don't want cash, they want freedom.  But there
> is no altruism involved.

Similarly, mothers don't /really/ love their children. It's all to do with
DNA. And when people risk their lives diving into rivers to save complete
strangers, what they're really after is the Hero Badge.

Yeah, right.

--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999

Mark Tarver wrote:

> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition.  Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business a
> struggling company trying to sell their own version.  Would this be
> ethical?  Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?

The closer to the metal, the more Free Software makes sense. It's Free as
in "Speech", not as in "Beer". Closed-source tools harm that struggling
company.

The closer to the user, the more a payware system makes sense. My
daughter just birthday-demanded an iTouch. (These things are far superior
to iPhones, because the lack of a phone is a positive feature...)

It was doubtless compiled with a gcc. Someone correct me there, but the
tools were probably open, and the actual UIkit is very closed. And we
indeed paid for it, so at least Apple ain't struggling!

--
Phlip

On 4 Mar, 18:34, Mark Tarver <dr.mtar...@ukonline.co.uk> wrote:
> A long time ago, sometime in the 70s I believe, a friend of mine used
> to work for RCA. =A0Right at that time Japan was expanding its
> electronics market in the Pacific and the Japanese were capturing the
> market from RCA by selling below cost. =A0My friend bitterly condemned
> these practices as unethical.
>
> This practice, called 'dumping', is generally condemned, and can often
> be prosecuted under law. =A0It has been used and criticised as such on
> several occasions e.g. w.r.t. the dumping of subsidised EC surplus
> produce on poor African nations, on Rockeller's ruthless expansion of
> Standard Oil by undercutting.
>
> In the defence of open source software, Richard Stallman was willing
> to condemn closed source software as unethical. =A0Now here is a
> thought. =A0Is it rather *free software which is unethical* because the
> supplier is dumping a free product from the position of having a
> subsidy?
>
> To put some flesh on the bare bones of this proposition. =A0Imagine if
> someone were to use their comfortably paid university position to
> produce, (e.g), a free GPL algebra tutor, thus putting out of business
> a struggling company trying to sell their own version. =A0Would this be
> ethical? =A0Is it not the ethical equivalent of dumping?
>
> This is posed as an open question, and a fairly important one (hence
> the cross post). =A0You should not assume that I'm against free/open
> source from my posing this question, although I'm willing to 'play
> black' (attack OS/free) in this thread if the responses are too one
> sided.
>
> Mark Tarverwww.lambdassociates.org

Briefly;

1.  The argument is about tax-subsidised software.

No. The argument against FOSS as presented does not essentially depend
on whether your dollars come from Uncle Sam or Uncle Ebenezer.  The
argument is that by releasing software whose price (=3D zero) does not
reflect the costs of development, you price competitors out of the
market whose pockets cannot afford to compete at this level.  The
question is 'Is this ethical?'  Has nothing at all to do with where
your money comes from.

2. Rightness is judged by intention; not by consequences.

Fine; your primary intention is good (free software and smiling faces)
- *but*
if it can be shown that the secondary effects of your action are evil
('Small
Faces Software' goes bust) and if it can be shown that these effects
were
forseeable then you might be held responsible for these evil
consequences.
The central point being that once you become aware of this connection,
it becomes part of your moral judgement to ignore the adverse affects
('It'll kill Small Faces but I don't care').

3. Do those who object to free software also object to free web email,
free online stories, volunteer (free) home builders who help the poor,
and free public education?

No; but the difference is that many of these things are targeted at
people who are poor.  Free services to those who cannot pay may be
fine; but FOSS makes no discrimination about who it affects.  It is a
fuel-air bomb in relation
to the market.

4. Is there any hard, concrete data (polls, sales figures, etc.) that
can show economic impact on both software businesses and the wider
economy?

Anecdotal evidence; the main apriori argument is that people will
rather choose to grab what is free rather than pay money for an
equivalent product;
and this seems fairly obvious.  The damage is long term and diffuse -
much as
Kent describes.  I've seen the effects on student enrollment in 2002;
people
walking away from CS because its not perceived as a good career move.
One
student told me so right to my face.  I didn't argue with him either.

Mark
www.lambdassociates.org

On 5 mar, 09:28, Richard Heathfield <r...@see.sig.invalid> wrote:
> Ron Garret said:
>
>
>
>
> 
> 
> 
nce 
> 
> 
> 
>
> Oh, I can't agree with that! :-)
> 
>
> I read that book about 15 years ago (assuming that the wiki article does
> indeed describe "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins - you can never tell=[/color
]

> with wiki). I thought it was nonsense then, and I think it's nonsense now.=[/color
]

> (It was, in fact, that book that persuaded me, much to my astonishment,
> that my stance on the whole Evolution vs Creation debate thing was
> completely wrong.)
>
> But whether you agree with me or not on that issue, the denial of altruism=[/color
]

> is merely a consequence of inappropriate reductionism. Whether people are
> altruistic because "God made them that way" or because it's an emergent
> species survival trait in a universe sans point, the fact remains that
> people /do/ (on occasion) behave altruistically. To pretend otherwise is
> just silly.
>
> --
> Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
> Email: -http://www. +rjh@
> Google users: <http://www.cpax.org.uk/prg/writings/googly.php>
> "Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999- Masquer le texte des messa=[/color
]
ges pr=E9c=E9dents -
>
> - Afficher le texte des messages pr=E9c=E9dents -

Hi all,

"God made them that way" : It's certainly a good argument for boudhist
or indouist :)

All the world is not catholic or believe in Protestantism.

And clearly , Chinese and most other country in Asia does not share
this point of view.

Best Regards

Daniel Pitts <newsgroup.spamfilter@virtualinfinity.net> writes:

> The difference is that the GPLed algebra tutor can be taken up by anyone
> (including the struggling company), and used, modified, updated,
> resold. You can't do that with material goods.

I only want to emphasize that the GPL (i.e. free software in the RMS sense)
is the decisive factor here.  Most commercial companies live and thrive
very much due to public domain and BSD software floating around provided to
all of us mostly by government funding.

In contrast, it is difficult for companies to use GPL software in the way
you describe above, because they might have to put all their sources
connected with the GPL piece under GPL.  At least, some business models of
making money easily do not work anymore.  (Some years ago, an internal
report of two Microsoft engineers about OSS leaked out, with more or less
this content: BSD - wonderful for us, GPL - evil).

Nicolas

P.S.: There is at least one newsgroup specifically dedicated to discussing
these issues, namely gnu.misc.discuss.