I hope you understand that ethic is not absolute. It's unethical for you, according to your ethical rules. Doesn't mean that this applies to other people rules too.
Yeah, we're on a site where a large majority of users shamelessly work at adtech companies, and threads regularly pop-up where people defend working at companies actively developing and selling exploits.
I am well aware of that, this is why I remind people that proprietary software is bad actually.
You wrote that "Closed-source software" is unethical, not "harmful software & services" is unethical. There is a significant difference. Don't shift your goal as you like.
Not all closed-source software is harmful; Obsidian here is a prime example of one which is not harmful and could be even considered as beneficial, despite being closed source, because of how open and supportive it's designed in everything else.
I was just confirming the point you made -- the definition of ethical is not absolute, and there are people that consider questionable things ethical.
> Obsidian here is a prime example of one which is not harmful and could be even considered as beneficial, despite being closed source
All proprietary software is unethical. It's as simple as that. No matter whether it's free or paid, no matter whether it's useful or harmful. If you have a right to use it but are deprived of the right to alter it, it is not ethical.
Depends on people, but for most it's mainly because Stallman says so.
You still have ethics ground if you think it the same way as repairability, actively blocking ways to repairs things you bought yourself is questionable, and keeping things closed source can be seen as a way to artificially prolonge a strict dependance on your vendor by impairing your ability to resolve issues by yourself.
Not disclosing the ingredients is illegal large part of the world, and people can die if you don’t do that, so the answer is clearly yes in some sense. This is also true for some cooking techniques, like heat treatment of raw meat. I think your analogy is not the best.
Not disclosing ingredients is more like not disclosing dependencies because I am very confident that you can't go into a shop, buy a random food and then construct recipe from list of ingredients.
It does however play a hugely important role in a recipe, in a way than the choice of language doesn't play in a program (especially considering turing completeness). So the analogy is broken.
Besides nobody made the point that list of ingredients makes a recipe.
Just that it's important to know the list of ingredients for a food you're gonna eat, and that it's even illegal to not disclose them (either to the public or a regulatory body) if you sell food.
As someone who also believes closed source software is unethical (though full of nuance), I don't appreciate the abrasive and combative (and frankly rude) way you are engaging on this. You're so epitomizing the rabid stereotype that part of me thinks you are just trolling and don't actually believe what you are saying.
If you actually care about this, stop alienating potential allies, and ideally start making arguments to support your case instead of telling people to RTFM (which in this case is even worse because "the manual" isn't as much of an authoritative mic drop as you seem to think it is).
This is the first paragraph after the initial quote defining "free software".
> We campaign for these freedoms because everyone deserves them. With these freedoms, the users (both individually and collectively) control the program and what it does for them. When users don't control the program, we call it a “nonfree” or “proprietary” program. The nonfree program controls the users, and the developer controls the program; this makes the program an instrument of unjust power.
It seems safe to say the author thinks that one creating "an instrument of unjust power" for oneself is unethical. Though, perhaps if the commenter in question pulled that quote out of the article, it could have helped their point.
You don't have to agree with it, but I think it's fair to parrot a take from people who have invested a lot of time and effort into considering why free software is good.
The linked page has a clear explanation for why one might consider nonfree software to be unethical.
Sometimes people take the time to read and understand something and conclude that this is the best way to express it, better than they themselves can paraphrase.
And sometimes they just collect opinions and follow suit, instead of forming their own ones. How do you know which one happened here, are you a mind reader?
> How do you know which one happened here, are you a mind reader?
If you admit that they could be doing one of two things ("And sometimes ...") but you assume it's actually one of them in particular ("I think they asked for your take, not GNU's."), then this question could similarly be asked of you.
A bigger problem with my model is that it's a false dilemma. These are both just characterizations. Both can be true at the same time just fine, and so can neither.
It even does my own sentiment poorly. My actual issue with this whole exchange was not that their thoughts are unoriginal (although I'd be surprised), but that this way of responding I find extremely lazy and disrespectful, as well as generally unreasonable. They were asked for their opinion. It doesn't have to be good, it doesn't have to be rigorous, it just has to be theirs.
Linking out to some reading material and adding nothing else of substance fails even this most basic expectation. It's a discussion thread, not a newsletter. But then just like in the other subthread where the person above found me from, I'm sure they'd argue that this is just, like, my opinion. And that it sure is.
Could ask the same from you really, but then you followed me here out of spite from the other subthread to just loosely regurgitate another person's reply [0], along with your lackey [1], trying to make it a touch more hostile on the way, so I think I do know the answer to that one...
> If you're not interested at all, why did you even join the conversation?
Or was this a genuine question? I don't think you do those though. Are you then maybe getting tripped up on your own dumb headcanon? Cause honestly, given that this would be the third time in this thread that you're conjuring up a strawman and twisting words, you have to appreciate I have a hard time believing anything coming out of your mouth (keyboard?) at this point. It's almost as if there was a reason I went off about what I did, and it's coming back to bite you in the ass now...
To you, is a suggestion for someone to explain their own thoughts in their own words, rather than link to someone else's, a sign of no interest at all? Did I really say that I wasn't interested in what their take was, or did I say that I wasn't interested in receiving another barrage of GNU links? Careful, the latter one doesn't even require thinking, only bare minimum intellectual honesty, seemingly your Achilles heel.
I am quite thankfull that thanks to unethical software I am able to pay my bills, instead of being like a street art performer hoping to get enough coins at the end of the day.
I was also a dreamer once upon a time, with M$ on my email signature and all that zealot attitude, then I had to support myself and face the reality that most supermarkets don't take pull requests.
I don't think GPL cares where the money is coming from - we're talking about closed/open source, not ethical business models. If we did, we'd have to also go over unfettered free markets and capital flow.
First of all, I do get by with just FOSS. Second -- whether you can or cannot get by without proprietary software has no relation to it being objectively unethical.
