The Legality of Forking | Hacker News Reader

The Legality of Forking

code.ipstenu.org

17 pointsptbello7 comments

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2009/10/19/the-point

The author routinely confuses right and legal, makes spurious value arguments and believes that literal contractualism is a replacement for social norms. In essence, the author believes that a defection-oriented society is right and good, that we'd all be better off in a low trust, highly mercenary society.

If he doesn't, then he neither understands his own position nor agrees with it.

To me, he seemed to flip-flop back and forth on it until the end. I think he was trying to counter-argue, but ended up presenting the ideas as his own.

Very confusing.

As for the company... They tried the money & collaboration method first. When it was rejected, they went another totally legal route.

We don't know why those devs left. Maybe it was money, maybe it was pride... Maybe they disagreed with the direction that was being taken, and changed companies so they could go in a better direction. Maybe they were bored. We don't know.

I'm not sure it matters why the devs left. What they did was still a breach of ethics.

Spot on. A well written summary of my reaction to the article too.

Separating "legal" and "ethical" is a problem with many people. Several years ago when I worked for state government there was an ethics controversy. The politician involved kept arguing his actions were legal, but, I think, missed the broader point of whether they were ethical. An ethics board of his peers—also elected officials—eventually "cleared" him while saying he acted inappropriately, so perhaps they too missed the difference.

Having social norms that are different (maybe even opposite) of the license is problematic, though. Especially if the license is written down and the norms are not.

I'll either be way upvoted or way downvoted for this, but next I expect to see an article on "The Legality of Spooning".

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