Comment by abakker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by abakker | Hacker News Reader

I understand the POV here, but as a user of autodesk products, I don't want Autodesk to turn away the revenue they need to keep making products I use. products are an ecosystem and if the product gets worse or updates get slower then the whole ecosystem suffers.

I will bet that a large number of green energy plants (solar, wind, etc) are designed using Autodesk tools, and a large amount of sustainable manufacturing as well.

Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing. Autodesk probably has provided services and tools which make this coal mine more efficient than it would have been otherwise, too - many of their products are designed to make engineering and manufacture more efficient.

I do agree, though, that their PR department and their actual response to the issues have been poor. I am thankful that we don't judge ever business merely by their PR; most are not that good.

disclaimer: I do not work for autodesk but I do own some small amount of autodesk stock because I like their products and use Fusion360 for free as a hobby machinist and woodworker.

> Not to be too reductive, but companies that make wrenches, welders, milling machines, steel, trucks etc. are all complicit in the same thing.

We're literally talking the end of life on this planet as we know it. The companies you mention are also complicit in creating the upcoming climate-caused world wars and their executives should similarly be held responsible.

If you think this position is extreme, you are not paying attention.

Calling for a tool manufacturer to be responsible for how a tool is used is absurd.

It's true, but it gets fuzzier when the tool is a service. If Autodesk has a cloud component, it's up to them whether they vend that component to fossil fuel prospectors or miners.

How is it fuzzier? If someone stores illegal content on Google Drive should Google be prosecuted? Of course not. And in this case we're not even talking about something that's illegal.

It's not whether they should be prosecuted, it's about what their ethical / moral stance is on the topic. Some people think cloud services should be like fire or water; available to everyone agnostic of what they choose to do with it. But that's a moral stance, and one reasonable people can have disagreement over. Google employees, for example, pushed company leadership on weather they were comfortable with the notion the company would provide machine learning services to the US military for target identification purposes in drone video.

Software as a service gives technology companies incredible power, and it is possible that in a world of potential existential risk to humanity, it is power they should leverage. Possible. I have no idea if it is a good idea.

Whether it's a desktop solution or a cloud component isn't really a big difference in my eyes. With both of them they will be purchasing (use-case agnostic) "customer support" as the main service.

What I do think is more problematic, is when the company goes out of their way to help develop the tools specifically for questionable industries, which is exactly what they are highlighting in the linked PDF (which is still a hotlink to Autodesk servers...).

Legally they all already are. Any tool which is required for the production of nuclear weapons is regulated. Things like hammers are easily available and not tracked, but precise enough CNC machines have built-in always on GPS and cell/satellite links to report their locations. The manufacturer is responsible for ensuring the machine cannot be used outside its licensed geofenced area.

I think you are referring to dual-use technologies [1], where the "dual" use means civilian and military. The list of technologies that are deemed "dual-use" is quite explicit and can be found in the Wassenaar Arrangement document [2]. In that document you'll find out there are plenty of paragraphs about software, for example on page 139 "software application programs designed to be hosted on general purpose computers located at Air Traffic Control centres and capable of accepting radar target data from more than four primary radars". I would be extraordinarily surprised if Autodesk were not in compliance with this rule. Similarly, as soon as a rule were passed to limit the use of a technology to ecologically damaging activities, Autodesk's Legal department would start combing through it and make sure they are in compliance, and if not, they'll see what steps to take to fall in compliance at the earliest date possible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-use_technology

[2]https://www.wassenaar.org/app/uploads/2019/12/WA-DOC-19-PUB-...

I agree, and do not think your position on the state of our planet is extreme. I do not think that asking autodesk to suspend licensing to a coal mine is going to stop coal mining. Nor will Autodesk adopting honest PR solve the climate crisis.

It is great when companies act, but it is not sufficient. If we are to solve the climate crisis, we need to put in place government regulations and price incentives to solve it. It is the only thing that has ever worked and we are not trying it.

These are not mutually exclusive strategies. Back during the 1980s, activists in the US tried to get the Reagan administration to pass sanctions against apartheid South Africa. While Reagan stalled, they successfully got individual companies to stop doing business with South Africa.

None of these individual actions stopped white-only rule in South Africa. Nor did anyone involved in the process think it would. But it was part of a worldwide movement that did ultimately lead to US sanctions and the end of apartheid.

In fact, one of the things that encourages government action is seeing that the change being suggested has become mainstream. Businesses boycotting the oil and gas industries could be an effective part of that.

It's maddening isn't it?

There's plenty of opportunities for money to be made by abandoning fossil fuels. Russia and Saudi Arabia might disagree, as well as the Kochs and their friends.

Where do you draw the line? Is a company that manufactures mechanical pencils complicit, because they might be used as writing instruments at a coal plant?

I agree that accountability is a good thing, and we need to be doing more as a society to protect the planet. But at some point one has to come to terms with the idea that they're building a generic tool and simply can't be responsible for how others use it.

(I'd argue the blame primarily belongs on the plant itself, those who buy coal from it, and the government that allowed it to operate.)

A better question is where do you draw the line in terms of companies supplying actors that are directly contributing to human suffering? We (America, but others as well) cut trade and enact sanctions exactly for that reason, all the time. This idea that capitalism should be entirely apolitical is farce, people only want it to be apolitical as far as they are personally comfortable.

they're building a generic tool and simply can't be responsible for how others use it

AutoDesk is undoubtedly aware of its sales with a massive coal plant, unless they are a horribly run and incredibly lucky company. Beyond that, it seems like AutoDesk has gone as far as promoting their involvement in developing the excavators, no?

Would you sell hammers to a sweat shop?

Please read up on the science. Climate change is bad (as is particulate pollution from coal mining) but it is hardly the end of life as we know it.

Do you consider quarantine and other responses to covid a, say, pause or temporary "end" of "life as we know it"? What would you consider an "end of life as we know it"?

Edit: Another good comparison point would be the Great Depression. Was that a (temporary) "end of life as we know it", in your view?

Reading the phrase "the end of life on this planet as we know it" to describe depressions or quarantines is a painfully big stretch.

This kind of absolute nonsense is the sign of an ideologue.

> The companies you mention are also complicit in creating the upcoming climate-caused world wars and their executives should similarly be held responsible.

It seems just as likely to me that the economic deprivation caused by an end (or dramatic reduction of) fossil fuel consumption would also lead to world wars (and likely vast ecological destruction). How does one effectively weigh those risks against each other?

At some point you will have to come to terms with the fact that things in the world will get shaken up by climate change. We've ridden comfortably through our grace period by matters of decades. Time to tear the bandaid off, some companies will adapt and some will fail. If you're right about AutoDesks' role in creating green energy products, then hopefully AutoDesks' success is tied to the green industry's own success.

> I don't want Autodesk to turn away the revenue they need to keep making products I use.

More than that, I don't want companies selling products to get to decide if I can use them based on what my business is. A product for sale should be available to all, regardless of why you don't like me today. If you don't like making money from me, you can always set up a MFFAM policy: Morons Funding the Fight Against Morons. (So named by Nearly Free Speech). Basically take the profit from my purchases to work against me, but don't deny my purchases.

Anyway, even if you won't sell to me directly, I could likely setup a straw purchase, which is just wasting resources.

> products are an ecosystem and if the product gets worse or updates get slower then the whole ecosystem suffers.

I can't resist pointing out the irony in your concern over the health of the software ecosystem, when it is the health of the our ecosystem that we depend on for life that's being discussed : ).

Which is not necessarily a critique of your comment, but, in a way you could argue that you just successfully argued against yourself ; ).

As a descendant of polish Jews and an eventually a user of various IBM software and hardware I can say confidently and definitively state that I would have much preferred they chose not to serve the Nazis at the potential discomfort of today having to buy a laptop that wasn't a ThinkPad (pre-lenovo).

At what point does a business entity need to draw the line in ethical matters, though? We've seen recent movements at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc. where employees put pressure on leadership to cease work with military, law enforcement, and surveillance bodies. Certainly there was lost revenue from there. So there is precedence in tech.

As trust in the government has withered away and civil society (along with God in the public sphere) has perished, business in America remains booming, perhaps it is time to rethink corporations as amoral capitalist rational actors, but as moral agents that must coexist within society as a whole, not just the market. So we will see more and more cases where businesses are forced to take corporate responsibility seriously, and not just perform acts of woke capitalism.

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