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Comment by jlangenauer | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the things that makes me think software development, like most other professions, should really have a formal code of ethics. If a lawyer or a construction engineer tried to do something equally dodgy, they would very soon find themselves hauled before a professional authority.

It should be made clear to the employees, management and investors of Kite that this is the sort of thing that marks you as someone willing to engage in unethical and underhanded behaviour. I wouldn't hire any such person into any team I manage, and I suspect quite a few other people wouldn't either. Actions have consequences. Especially unethical actions.

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Lawyers do dodgy and unethical things as well, I wouldn't use them as a paragon of ethics.

An argument that explicitly talks about the consequences of unethical behaviour when it happens is not painting anyone as ethical paragons. You are missing the point, I think.

Heh, you know something is seriously f*cked up in industry when lawyers are taken for an ethics compass.

This is called a 'fiduciary duty' and is common in many professions (law, medicine, finance, real estate, clergy, etc)

Here's a great explanation and strategy for applying to software development: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/10/infor...

I believe that is a self-conflicting proposition, since I believe morality is a subjective "property"

"Subjective" how exactly? There are surely some variations, but if this is about "my wallet has feelings too" morality, that would be all the more reason we'd need an (enforceable) code of ethics.

Subjective in the sense that something you find morally wrong i could find it morally right, or morally neutral. E.g. for the specific issue of this thread, I consider what they did to be morally neither bad or good. The developer has no obligation(moral or legal) to check with me before commiting stuff in the repo he controls. He doesn't owe me anything. In fact I could say that I owe him (morally, by my moral standards, because I 've been using his code). But that's just my view.

Well yes but morals and ethics are almost by definition about valuing the interaction between people. As such, even if you assume that moral is subjective, if you only have your own personal morality, that's rather useless - it only becomes useful if you can agree with some other people about common rules of behavior.

You could say for yourself "I personally don't believe in private property, so I don't see any objection with theft" but my hunch is that this argument wouldn't do much to calm the victim of your theft.

That proposed code of ethics in software seems like an attempt to create exactly such an agreement.

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