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Comment by petterroea | Hacker News Reader

It's always funny when people publish source code and have a disclaimer saying "You CANNOT use it for bad!". When is the last time a criminal read such a disclaimer and thought "Oh right, guess this isn't for me"?

Sure, at least the developer can say they did say so, but it doesn't matter. To me it seems more like avoiding responsibility. You published the tool, and by doing so you changed the world, even minutely, and in ways you cannot predict.

As hackers we bear the responsibility of tools we publish. Even if you believe knowledge is the most important and that everything _should_ be published, we should at least be well aware of the consequences. Great power, great responsibility.

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I think it’s trying to demonstrate intent. “This is cool and hacking is fun” vs “Here is a tool to do bad things”. I don’t think it would much protect you from consequences, but it can change perception of the intent of the project.

I think you are right, it just feels useless.

Maybe! It won’t change liability. But perception is important too.

Hardware stores sell chainsaws. There might be a disclaimer about proper usage or safety guidelines or some such, but you're right... someone who intends to use something to commit a crime, will do so regardless of the text asking them not to.

Yeah but like it's fine if two people use a flipper zero to get cheaper groceries. That's not actually a bad thing.

Who do you think feels the effect of fraud/theft at retail stores? The "rich" owners feel a little of it, sure, but they have a proven strategy for keeping their profits up by reducing costs: fire employees and make those who remain do more work for the same pay. So you think this is "not actually a bad thing" because you're screwing over <insert big company here> but really you're just screwing over the workers.

That's not true. If any company loses revenue is has a lot of places to dump that loss. One is shrinking profit margins, another is raising prices, and another is lowering operating costs like labor, but also pulling lower-margin items off shelves and all other manner of cost cutting.

Let's oversimplify dramatically and say that every single lost dollar is paid through cutting the workforce. You're ignoring the fact that people benefit from the theft: those who need food and are able to steal it rather than going hungry. How do you know that feeding those people is worth less than employing the workers lost to their theft?

I'm not quite sure I follow your question. Are you asking how do I know that someone who loses their job needed their job to afford groceries? If so, I guess I felt it was a safe assumption that the people working at grocery stores are not financially independent.

No not my question. Sorry if it was unclear. I'm trying to understand how you're thinking about this. The question is "are there numbers x and y for which it's good that x number of people who would otherwise go hungry eat food even though it costs y number of people their job"

What would you prefer they say?

Presumably they want nobody to ever publish or even explore "bad" things.

Because as we all know, if something "bad" is possible, but no one has published a GitHub about it, no one will ever be able to do the bad thing! Society is saved at last!

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