Design principles and ethics (was Re: Execute without read (was [...]))

[Pierre THIERRY]

Scribit Marcus Brinkmann dies 28/04/2006 hora 01:47:
> Maybe you should wait for me to formalize my arguments until you jump
> to conclusions about why I am rejecting this.  So far I only gave you
> the summary.

I was about to ask you if you give us the whole story, indeed.

> > I fully support the fact that you won't implement yourself some
> > schemes.  But as an OS architect, you must not close doors to other
> > implementers of thoses schemes, at least for this only reason.
> As an OS architect, no.  As a free software programmer and activist, I
> have strong reasons to do so.

I admit I do sometimes think the same way (and do act in this way), but
I'm not sure it's not morally objectionable, sincerely.

> I would recommend that Alice and Bob go to a keg party and have a beer
> over their differences.
> 
> I would further educate Alice about [...]
> 
> Furthermore, I would talk to Bob and warn him about [...]

That's a faithful commitment to social progress in the world, and I can
only promote it, but it does not solve the problem here. Maybe it's
easier than in the general case, here, to reverse engineer the program,
and Bob will, as all his friends know, cheat if he can. Not to hurt
Alice, but because he has no self-confidence.

And maybe he we will not pass the final exams, just short, because
cheating at the software development course had lead him to not
understand what he was doing, and he would have if cheating was not
possible.

Your conclusions about the fact that reverse engineering is harder than
writing from scratch, that NDA are dangerous and than educating people
instead of limiting them are, at best, true in the general case.

But building principles on the general or, worse, ideal case is a very
dogmatic position, IMHO.

In fact, you do with the OS what you would tell Alice not to do with her
source code, I think. You should not prevent people to do morally
objectionable uses of the system. You should go educate them so they
don't want anymore.

> It's really sad that some students have swallowed up the story of
> "everybody against everybody" so early in childhood that they bring
> this attitude to university.  It's something that we should work
> against, not support.

That's not the matter here. The people I love around me somethimes have
to protect me from myself, and I sometimes have to protect them form
themsleves. And we are generally wery grateful that we did that to each
other. That could be the case between Alice and Bob here.

Doubtfully,
Nowhere man
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