morality != religion and doing OSS != OSS company

[Henry Spencer]

On Sat, 22 May 2004, Lloyd Budd wrote:
> > Seen from a distance, the two can be hard to tell apart.  Nor is there
> > consensus on where one ends and the other begins.
> 
> Your response seems to be misdirection .  I am starting to think
> so was your previous response . I do not see why you think
> "this is good" , nor what "religious fervor fading" has to do with
> IBM not feelmorally driven to OSS .

It's good that IBM has *practical* motives to be interested in open
source, because if they had instead undergone a religious conversion to
fervent support of open source regardless of practical motives, the odds
are good that they would eventually change their minds.

The *only* way open source is ever going to make it in the business world
is if it looks more profitable than the alternative.  And if it does, the
business world will adopt it without feeling "morally driven".

Corporations like IBM are not mysterious evil entities separate from the
rest of the world.  Their capital funding comes from stockholders, who
entrust them with it in hopes that they can make it grow; corporations
exist solely for that purpose.  Their *highest* *moral* *obligation*,
rising above all others (except, for practical reasons, compliance with
applicable laws), is to make those investments grow in value.  That's the
duty they owe to their owners.  Expecting corporations to disregard
profitability in the name of some other objective is asking them to throw
away the money of people who trusted them -- a thoroughly immoral act. 
Corporations' moral obligations to their stockholders largely preclude
them from being "morally driven" by other considerations. 

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry-lqW1N6Cllo0sV2N9l4h3zg at public.gmane.org

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