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Comment by throwawgler87 | Hacker News Reader

Legally no, morally yes

Legally no, morally no, ethically yes?

I feel like this is an underrated distinction. While definitions vary, this way of looking at it resonates pretty strongly with me, personally.

Ethically yes — simply because it will be in their best interest to do so over time.

That's why "Amazon can do better." Not to act more altruistically, but to do better. If they keep doing things like this, it won't be good for them.

Interesting, how would you define ethically different than morally?

In a nutshell, ethics is a bit more pragmatic than morals. Ethos and moralis, the customs and "of the customs".

It was my impression that morality regards the beliefs of one person/entity (here, Amazon) while ethics refers to a different/opposing group.

So clearly Amazon has no moral scruples about doing what they did, but to us (or others) it's ethically ambiguous.

Well, disagreeing about which words to use doesn't necessarily mean there's any disagreement about the object-level situation, but FWIW, the definition I've generally heard is that "ethics" refers to the whole general "ought" side of the is-ought distinction, which is further divided into: axiology, which outcomes are actually desireable in the first place; morality, what actions and strategies people ought to follow to achieve those outcomes; and law (not, unfortunately, to be confused with actual law), how groups of people ought to act in order to deal with coordination problems and evil people.

> So clearly Amazon has no moral scruples about doing what they did

Dude, they picked a software project that was released to the world under a license that explicitly allows anyone and everyone to use it as they see fit, and they proceeded to use the software.

Please do explain exactly wheredo you see any breech in morality.

The point of my comment(s) is expressly that this _isn't_ a breach of morality...

It seems to me that it's not a breach of morality, ethics, or even goodwill. It is a FLOSS project being used in compliance with the author's will.

Morality is a code of values a person may hold, whereas ethics is a philosophic (scientific) approach to discovering and defining such codes, and an attempt to answer two specific questions - whether a human being needs a code of values, and if so, what code of values they should choose to flourish as a human being (and not as any other "being").

So, a person may be clear morally, based on a code of values that puts an emphasis on a legal aspect of interactions between people, but from the perspective of ethics we can observe that such a code may not be sufficient to fully realise their potential of flourishing as a human being.

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