What ethical problems? Decompiling is perfectly moral and ethical. Whether it is illegal is a seperate and, for me, almost irelevant issue. If I legally own a copyrighted work I am allowed to read it, period and end of story. Corporate licences excepted, software is SOLD, not licensed despite the scary words on the box and the dread click through EULA.
Hell, I learned assembly by writing a disassembler (in BASIC) and reading the Microsoft BASIC roms, then l
What ethical problems? Decompiling is perfectly moral and ethical.... If I legally own a copyrighted work I am allowed to read it, period and end of story. Corporate licences excepted, software is SOLD, not licensed despite the scary words on the box and the dread click through EULA.
I disagree here. I am a strong believer that people should be able to trade goods/services for prices/conditions they mutually agree upon. If I write software and say I will sell it to you for $x on condition that you do Y
> I think it is morally repugnant of you to break our agreement and decompile.
While you are welcome to your delusions, but out here in the real world we have some things called laws. Specifically the Uniform Commercial Code and the Copyright laws.
You will note that I excepted commercial licenses, since those are actual signed contracts and are legally binding.
According to the Uniform Commercial Code if goods are exchanged in regular trade there can't be strings attached; i.e. if it looks like a sale
First you imply that the actual laws are irrelevant to your views on morality:
What ethical problems? Decompiling is perfectly moral and ethical. Whether it is illegal is a seperate and, for me, almost irelevant issue.
Then when someone argues on moral grounds:
If I write software and say I will sell it to you for $x on condition that you do Y (perhaps Y is not decompiling the source), and you agree to these terms, I think it is morally repugnant of you to break our agreement and decompile.
First you imply that the actual laws are irrelevant to your views on morality
Laws should be irrelevant to your views on morality. Morality is supposed to dictate law, to provide predictable, uniform enforcement and to clearly state the expectations of a moral code already in existance. Do things the other way around and you're gonna have a bad time. He isn't saying that laws and morality are unrelated, only that the relationship ought to be associated with a clear, unidirectional causality, and therefore
He isn't saying that laws and morality are unrelated, only that the relationship ought to be associated with a clear, unidirectional causality, and therefore that moral decisions are not dictated by the law.
If it's a unidirectional causality, then a moral assessment should never depend on any particular laws. The original poster claimed that unapproved decompilation was immoral. Then jmorris42 came around and started citing specific laws to prove that he had the legal right to do so.
What's worse is he assumed that hypothetical agreement wasn't in writing and proceeded to draw further conclusions from that assumption, sounding very much like someone who is used to exploiting another's lack of knowledge about specific laws.
> What's worse is he assumed that hypothetical agreement wasn't in writing > and proceeded to draw further conclusions from that assumption
No, read up the thread, in the very first post I excluded the case of corporate site licensing and other such real signed contract sort of software licensing it should be clear I am discussing consumer EULAs.
I assert that since EULAs are wrong on both moral and legal grounds, either of which alone is cause for ignoring them. I claim that I have as much right to r
Their idea of an offer you can't refuse is an offer... and you'd better
not refuse.
What ethical problems? (Score:5, Insightful)
What ethical problems? Decompiling is perfectly moral and ethical. Whether it is illegal is a seperate and, for me, almost irelevant issue. If I legally own a copyrighted work I am allowed to read it, period and end of story. Corporate licences excepted, software is SOLD, not licensed despite the scary words on the box and the dread click through EULA.
Hell, I learned assembly by writing a disassembler (in BASIC) and reading the Microsoft BASIC roms, then l
Re:What ethical problems? (Score:3, Insightful)
I disagree here. I am a strong believer that people should be able to trade goods/services for prices/conditions they mutually agree upon. If I write software and say I will sell it to you for $x on condition that you do Y
Re:What ethical problems? (Score:5, Interesting)
While you are welcome to your delusions, but out here in the real world we have some things called laws. Specifically the Uniform Commercial Code and the Copyright laws.
You will note that I excepted commercial licenses, since those are actual signed contracts and are legally binding.
According to the Uniform Commercial Code if goods are exchanged in regular trade there can't be strings attached; i.e. if it looks like a sale
Re:What ethical problems? (Score:2)
First you imply that the actual laws are irrelevant to your views on morality:
Then when someone argues on moral grounds:
Re:What ethical problems? (Score:0)
First you imply that the actual laws are irrelevant to your views on morality
Laws should be irrelevant to your views on morality. Morality is supposed to dictate law, to provide predictable, uniform enforcement and to clearly state the expectations of a moral code already in existance. Do things the other way around and you're gonna have a bad time. He isn't saying that laws and morality are unrelated, only that the relationship ought to be associated with a clear, unidirectional causality, and therefore
Re:What ethical problems? (Score:2)
If it's a unidirectional causality, then a moral assessment should never depend on any particular laws. The original poster claimed that unapproved decompilation was immoral. Then jmorris42 came around and started citing specific laws to prove that he had the legal right to do so.
What's worse is he assumed that hypothetical agreement wasn't in writing and proceeded to draw further conclusions from that assumption, sounding very much like someone who is used to exploiting another's lack of knowledge about specific laws.
Re:What ethical problems? (Score:2)
> and proceeded to draw further conclusions from that assumption
No, read up the thread, in the very first post I excluded the case of corporate site licensing and other such real signed contract sort of software licensing it should be clear I am discussing consumer EULAs.
I assert that since EULAs are wrong on both moral and legal grounds, either of which alone is cause for ignoring them. I claim that I have as much right to r