Ethical and Moral Considerations in Proprietary Software Usage
sfconservancy.org
In this philosophical essay, I explore the question: “When (if at all) is it ethically and morally acceptable to use proprietary software in the production and/or improvement of urgently needed copylefted FOSS?”The question presents a complex conundrum. I attempt herein to rigoriously examine it through both a priori ethical analysis and a posteriori (and folksy) consideration of my personal experience and the shared experiences of the early software freedom movement.

I wasn’t familiar with the author before this article. You can see his wikipedia page here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_M._Kühn

He is best known for his efforts in GPL enforcement,[7] as the creator of FSF’s license list, and as original author of the Affero General Public License. He has long been a proponent for non-profit structures for FLOSS development, and leads efforts in this direction through the Software Freedom Conservancy. He is a recipient of the 2012 O’Reilly Open Source Award.

Excerpt from the first part of the piece:

In this philosophical essay, I explore the question: “When (if at all) is it ethically and morally acceptable to use proprietary software in the production and/or improvement of urgently needed copylefted FOSS?”

The question presents a complex conundrum. I attempt herein to rigoriously examine it through both a priori ethical analysis and a posteriori (and folksy) consideration of my personal experience and the shared experiences of the early software freedom movement.

I surprised myself at the outcome of my analysis. I conclude that under some circumstances (of which we have already witnessed in key historical examples), use of proprietary software by FOSS contributors to create/improve FOSS becomes a moral imperative. And, that imperitive often supersedes the moral imperative to avoid using that proprietary software.

  • unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml
    1·
    2 months ago

    Benefit and morality are separate things.

    Well yeah, they are. But they’re tightly connected regardless.

    As you’ve rightly noticed, benefit to self isn’t automatically immoral. Neither is all benefit to society.

    For example, killing some parts of society (perhaps the mentally lesser) is as immoral as it gets.

    However, I feel working to advance society in sane ways that do not harm vulnerable groups inherently is a moral thing to do.

    Things like charity, volunteering. Hell, even feeling bad when you pass by someone on the street and do nothing else about it. Not ideal, but at least you’re not heartless and see your flaws.

    Whinc means you care. And that’s the first step to the last one: being a driver of change.

    However, not everyone is set on this path. Most people do not have the resources (of whatever kind: money, infuence, power, time… the list goes on). Hell, even the drive to change or the eyes to see issues.

    That’s why it’s important to create systems which help those in need and make a baseline of quality and utility, accessible to all. Such systems are, in essence, infrastructure.

    And FOSS is an example of such infrastructure.

    It lowers the barriers to entry for everyone.

    Then big players like to “take advantage” of that. For example, Facebook (yes, that one) is said to be the “Largest MySQL cluster in the world”, since all their products store data in MySQL. And MySQL is (mostly) FOSS.

    However, that’s a great thing. It makes the infrastructure free. Facebook has money, and if they have a problem with something MySQL does badly, they can throw money at it. Then the fix will be there for everyone using it to benefit from.

    In some sense it’s the logical inversion of the famous “Tragedy of the commons” since instead of multiple people runnung the well dry, a single one can fix the well and make it run smoother.

    And since most FOSS is “viral” (a genius idea by whoever thought it up), it’ll most likely stay that way.

    About GitHub: it’s a platform built aroung Git, the stupid content tracker. A piece of FOSS software made by none other than the creator of Linux.

    As you’ve noticed yourself, Android roms themselves are “proprietary”. But the largest base they take from is AOSP - Open source. They also use other FOSS projects. There’s a master list hidden somewhere in the Settings of each phone (including iPhones) - so even Apple isn’t “immune” to open source.

    They need it to be competitive. Why remake something that’s already freely available to all, anyways?

    Using FOSS is inherently good in my eyes percisely because of the “viral” part.

    The standard meaning of “viral” in Open source is as follows: you can’t take open source software and close it off. It needs to stay open.

    However, there’s another aspect of virality that’s important to mention: the more people use FOSS, the more it grows. And the more it grows, the more accessible it is (people know). The more useful it is (there’s more of it, it does more stuff). And finally, users benefit more from it. Some go on to expand and enlarge it!

    A wonderful cycle of growth. And even something as simple as merely using it is doing the cycle a favour.

    And while one person relying on proprietary software won’t do much harm, it adds up fast. It breaks the cycle.

    Think of it like a kind of herd immunity.

    That’s why I feel using open source software is a moral imperative.

    Open source is better than proprietary for the users. And using it is better for it. It’s a symbiotic relationship.