Comment by lelanthran | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lelanthran | Hacker News Reader

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> Seems pretty unethical to me.

I'm seeing this sentiment multiple times on this thread - "fine, it's legal, but it's still wrong!"

That's an extremely disrespectful take on someone adhering to a contract that both parties agreed to. You are using shaming language to pressure people into following your own belief system.

In this specific instance, the author could have chosen any damn license they wanted to. They didn't. They chose one to get the most adoption.

You appear to want both:

1. Widespread adoption

and

2. Restrict what others can do.

The MIT license is not compatible with #2 above. You can ask nicely, but if you don't get what you want you don't get to jump on a fucking high horse and religiously judge others using your own belief system.

Author should have used GPL (so any replaced images get upstreamed back and thus he has control) OR some other proprietary license that prevents modifications like changing the image.

A bunch of finger-pointers gabbing on forums about those "evil" people who stick to both the word and the spirit of the license are nothing more than the modern day equivalent of witch-hunters using "intent" to secure a prosecution.

Be better than that - don't join the mob in pointing out witches. We don't need more puritans.

The LGPL/GPL/AGPL family of licenses don't require upstreaming, only passing source code downstream to end users.

In this case upstreaming replaced images wouldn't be useful to the author anyway, they are going to keep the anime image.

> In this case upstreaming replaced images wouldn't be useful to the author anyway, they are going to keep the anime image.

In this case, it would be, because (presumably) the new images are the property of the user, and they would hardly want (for example) their company logo to be accidentally GPL'ed.

I do not agree with your position that two parties who enter into a contract are no longer subject to ethical judgment by others. Contract law does not invalidate ethics, no matter how appealing it is to opt out of them. As one of the asocial / decoupled people who has no social compulsion whatsoever, I voluntarily opt-in to preferring prosocial outcomes and typically deem anti-prosocial actions unethical even if our society currently accepts them.

For example, if an employee does something hostile towards society at their employer when they have the freedom to choose not to do so — and since employment is at will, they always have that freedom to choose — I will tend to judge their antisocial actions unethical, even if their contract allows it. (This doesn’t mean I will therefore judge the person as unethical! One instance does not a pattern make, etc.)

So, for me, ethical judgments are not opt-out under any circumstance, nor can they be abrogated by contract or employment or law. I hold this is a non-negotiable position, so I will withdraw here; you’re welcome to continue persuading others if you wish.

> Contract law does not invalidate ethics, no matter how appealing it is to opt out of ethics

I didn't claim it does, I am claiming that since ethics is subjective and the contract is not, you subjecting your moral standard to others is no different than a mob subjecting an old woman to accusations of being a witch.

Now, you may not have a problem publicly judging others, but your actions are barely different from those of the Westboro Baptist Church.

IOW, sure, you are allowed to publicly condemn people who hold different moral beliefs to you, but the optics are not good for you.

You're using some really emotional language about what is really not such a huge issue. Maybe it's time to go offline for a while?

"no different than a mob subjecting an old woman to accusations of being a witch."

Well, you're not being driven out of your village or being executed... Also the person you're replying to has beeing rather polite. Hardly a witch hunt is it?

"barely different from those of the Westboro Baptist Church"

The church that interrupts the grieving of the families of dead soldiers to shout about how much they hate gay people? You seriously believe that the person you're repling to is "barely different" from that?

"IOW, sure, you are allowed to publicly condemn people who hold different moral beliefs to you, but the optics are not good for you."

You're literally condeming them for having different moral beliefs than you right now, while being much more accusatory about it, comparing them to some really vile people. I wonder how you feel the optics of this reflects on you, because I don't think it's good for you.

Why are you so offended that someone might judge you for ignoring the friendly request of someone giving you something for free?

You seem to be making the argument that someone who uses shaming language to impose their ideological/religious is should not be responded to in kind.

I obviously disagree; smearing a veneer of civility over thought-policing does not make that thought policing any more acceptable.

> You're literally condeming them for having different moral beliefs than you right now,

You also appear to be claiming that, when being policed by puritans, one should politely put up with it. I also disagree - I don't think puritanical holier-than-thou comments deserve more civility than they give.

> I wonder how you feel the optics of this reflects on you, because I don't think it's good for you.

People pointing out thought-policing always look good ;-)

The ones who are crusading for it tend to look bad. I'm not too worried.

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