Framing web pages

[Jared]

>> Yet how do we manage the folks who believe that they are ethically
>> responsible when they are not? 
> 
> Simple. We don't. In my opinion, we would be over-stepping our ethical
> boundaries to try and force these ethics on others. Telling someone it's
> wrong to beat their wife is one thing, telling them it's wrong to
> collect excessive royalties is completely different. *You* do what is
> right, and hope that in time others will "see the light."

Excellent answer. I entirely agree.

>> They cannot be persuaded by an appeal
>> to ethics because they already believe they are abiding by a noble
>> ethic.
> 
> Most of these profit-seeking folks don't believe they are "abiding by a
> noble ethic." In fact, many of them are very aware of the fact that
> their ethics suck. They simply don't care.

Look closely: they are not fully aware that their ethics suck. Their
noble ethic is: "Competition" and they DO believe they are abiding
by a noble one. They care, but little: they see other noble ethics
as unrealistic in the "real world" of competition.

They just haven't realized that competition makes money, but not
loyal customers. They wonder why they have to work so hard for
their money, and they "simply don't care" because they are so
weary from working so hard. When enough weariness sets in, the
more noble ethics become attractive.

> I don't say this just because I "think" this is how it is. I know it. I
> socialize with a wide variety of people, several of which fall into the
> artist/author-with-sucky-ethics group. I recall one fellow who developed
> a simple application that he was selling for upwards of $1K per copy.
> The product had some fairly obvious flaws that could have been easily
> corrected, and when I suggested the fixes the guy replied with something
> to this effect: why fix it when my customers are dumb enough to buy it
> how it is? This is an example of an author not having any respect or
> ethical responsibility to his customer, and it's wrong.

Yup. And all we can do about it is wait for him to wake up, because
no amount of persuasion will convince him. But time will.

>> Hint 1: For an ethical system to be superior to another ethical
>> system, it must apply _less_ force in implementation. Brute force
>> is the lowest form of ethics. What is the highest?
> 
> Read up on Ghandi.

Or Socrates, who perfected the art of the rhetorical question on
the subject of ethics.

>> Hint 2: I think Linus Torvalds has a pretty good idea of it, but
>> a lot of people who "follow" him do not. And as near as I can
>> tell, he's okay with that. ;-)
> 
> Linus has some good personal ethics. Linus is also very forward about
> his refusal to force his ethics on others. This is why he doesn't like
> the GPL 3 for *his* projects. Linus doesn't care if you use the GPL3,
> and he will likely end up as an end-user of many GPL3 programs. Since
> the GPL3 exceeds what he feels is acceptable bounds, he isn't using it.

Good example. It will be interesting to see how Stallman and Torvalds
followers work this one out over the centuries consequent to their
groundbreaking work in this new era.

-Jared

--
"In the information era, wars are fought over the Quality of
information, not the Quantity of land, as with all previous
wars. The wars will not be bloody, but the information will
become more and more pure, as power accumulates around Quality
of information same as it accumulates around Quantity of land."
(Zend and the Art of River Maintenance, 2007)