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First, Do No Harm - A Hippocratic Oath for Coders?
rhysweatherley asks: "With the increase in spyware, spam, etc, is it time for a Hippocratic Oath for Programmers? Should programmers be able to refuse to write code that harms the public more than it helps? Should they code defensively to prevent software and information being misused for unintended purposes? And how do we protect such programmers from being dismissed unfairly for standing on principle?"
Discuss.
never happen though.
they'd just fire you and hire someone else. If you are unwilling especialy now there will be 10 other people willing to do it and take your job if you aren't.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Every job I have ever worked there has been a contract. If you won't do the work required of you by your employer, they have every right to dismiss you. Not that I don't agree with that, but law is law, as unfortunate as it may be.
...coders can refuse to write such code, its called quitting. The real problem is that prospective employers are not all that keen people who quit their jobs for reasons of personal ethics.
Just like there are doctors who ignore the Hippocratic oath, there would continue to be plenty of developers only concerned with bucks. The hypotethical oath described wouldn't do anything more than programmers' consciences do right now.
The goatse guy for president. Win one for the gaper!
A Hypocritic Oath is more appropiate...
That all coders working on military projects should refuse to now?
Bah. it's stupid to expect this... I mean, you'll just have "renigade" coders doing the dirty work for huge sums of money...
People code what they code. If they don't want to, they won't. However, I can understand if it would cost somebody there job. You have to look at it more as the company taking advantage of spyware and not the programmers.
# root is the greed of all evil #
blame the companies who tell the programmers what to do.
However, even such a thing won't work, because there are still too many engineering fuckups; too often those are caused by a goddammed accountant sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong. Likewise, programmers won't be exempt from accountant (and PHBs) pressures.
And the hippocratic oath never prevented the nazis doctors from doing their experiments on prisoners.
What you need is something stronger, like the Suk School of Medidine, but those are awefully expensive...
Medical Doctors work years to learn their field. no one gets through school ouside 6 years, and that's the insane outside nerd. most take 8 years. so, not any schmoe can be a doctor. any schmoe can be a programmer. pick up a book, learn the language, the logic, and bam! you can program. well, look around for how to exploit some things, learn to use whatever language to do so, and you have a self taught hacker or whatever they wanna be. you don't see a self taught doctor anywhere, do you?
You have to remember that even if you have the money and values to stand up and refuse to code a application, there will be a person right behind you with no money and no values willing to take your place. All you are doing is delaying the process. I know its a bitter view, but its a truthful one.
A "oath" like this could lead to ommendoms with stuff like "I will follow the DMCA", and other digital rights management junk. I'd be cautious to the threats this could cause. And hey, there's plenty of spam software out already, merely stopping the production of more wouldn't stop spam.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
fit under the Engineer's Code of Ethics?
Well, certianly not all coders are Engineers and conversely also. But I believe it should apply.
In obvious ways when it comes to assisted suicide, but in many other eways.
For example, the oath requires you treat your teacher as your father, his children as your siblings.
It forbids surgery!
It forbids charging for medical education.
So it may not be the best model..
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
This is the classic dilema with all technology, which can be used equally to promote good as well as well as evil. Encryption software enables privacy for bad guys as well as good, just like guns protect people indescriminately. While it's a good idea in a perfect world, it can't be done. Its a variant of the old 'guns don't kill, people do'.
Actually there are now a few software engineering courses popping up in universities (not comp. sci. nor electrical engineer) and these graduates will necessarily have to adhere to standard engineering practices.
an engineer's hippocratic oath
The last thing I want to see is a Software Engineer Union or licensing of code writers.
If you think your employer is doing something you think is unethical, you can refuse. If they fire you, then you have the option of finding another software job or flipping burgers at McDonalds.
It is not the end of the world to lose your job, especially if you lost it because of your principles.
That's a fun game when you're a kid, but when you're an adult, it's just going to take time away from the programming.
Because of this, I would oppose any sort of hippo addittion to the programming.
I would take it, except my Greek isn't too good.
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
if i were asked to program something against any principle i had, i'd do it, on the grounds that if i don't, they'll find someone who will....for less money too, the most i'm willing to do is be leary and try to get more money for going against my ethics, it's a capitalistic world, and money can't buy happiness, but it can buy all the nerdy toys that make me happy!
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
If the medical profession was as young as professional programming is, there would be no such thing as the hippocratic oath.
:(
These are dark times.
As stated above: never happen though
Well, it could, but what exatly is "harmful to the public"?
Can we, as programmers see things as clear-cut as doctors? Even doctors see large amounts of gray all the time.
Perhaps what we need, as stated many times is simply a general movement to open-souce. People can get rid of the code they dislike. Also, some people, like some doctors, will always want to harm the "common good".
What would be neat though is a code of standards for software:
1-The user has contol over all communications to and from the program
2-The program shall be stable enough for everyday use (whatever that might come to mean)
3-The user will know of all processes run by the program and al, parts of the computer system it affects or alters.
etc
etc
etc
This might go a long way towards keeping software, thus programmers, doing good instead of 'evil'. It would also mean that software with a 'stamp of approval' ie (no pun intended) it meets the standards could be marked as such, and treated as such. This is a broad conceptual idea, so don't bash me to hard on the details. Perhaps I shall write a journal about it....
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
You should do no harm even without an oath. Why should you need to promise not to do something bad?
testing out my trending skills
Coders are human, and therefore assholes. Exactly how much spamware do you think is written by enslaved hackers, bewailing the evil they're forced to write? And how much of it is written by people who don't give a shit?
An hippocratic oath is all very well, but it's not going to accomplish anything. Conscientious programmers will refuse to write stuff to which they object, other programmers won't. That'll always be the case, irrespective of any resolution.
I believe teh British Computer Society has a clause in its members' charter which is akin to this sort of thing; it says something along the lines of programmers having to bear in mind the social impact of their work, but I don't know whether they've every kicked any spamware programmers out. I kinda doubt it.
It seems to me that the Open Source development model has a kind of built in code of ethics, as there is much more of a sense of common good and a deeper commonality of purpose than can be found in proprietary software shops. At least that's been my experience as a coder....
sounds good to me, but do i get paid all the over time it's going to take to incorporate all the extra code that will prevent my projects from being used for evil(said much like hecubus form teh kids in hall skit)?
look, with my dyslexia and all, i have a hard enough time meeting the deadlines as is now youwant to force me into adding more to my already bloated code? shove off i say! only if i get free Guiness!
If you actually want to stop being made to do unethical coding projects, there's needs to be laws that ban those sort of things. Like a "no spyware bill" or something. This probably already falls under bills that attempt to protect people's privacy.
Personally I think if a company is intending on invading your privacy they should be forced to display a *short* *readable* warning (ie. not legalese) that tells the user what they are about to do. Hiding something in a 30 page privacy policy is no different than not mentioning it at all, even lawyers don't read those things!
Websurfing done right! StumbleUpon
Coders are a diverse bunch, really. This type of thing works for doctors, lawyers etc because they're a tightly regulated group of 'professionals' - you basically need to belong to an association to legally practice.
With coding, there's no such restriction, and many of us like it that way. Anyone who has the brains and inclination to learn can sit down at a system and punch out some code. What motivates one coder can be very different to another; there are quite a few who enjoy wreaking havoc, and there are also those who simply do it for the money. One person's idea of bad code is probably not the same as another's.
For this sort of thing to work, it'd have to be an across-the-profession thing. And since software writers aren't regulated or 'licenced', having them all belong to the same organisation and association is never going to happen. Start this sort of thing up, and any employer who has a problem will simply hire a programmer who hasn't "taken the oath".
Software Engineering Code of Ethics and Professional Practice
ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Task Force on Software Engineering Ethics and Professional Practices
Short Version
PREAMBLE
The short version of the code summarizes aspirations at a high level of the abstraction; the clauses that are included in the full version give examples and details of how these aspirations change the way we act as software engineering professionals. Without the aspirations, the details can become legalistic and tedious; without the details, the aspirations can become high sounding but empty; together, the aspirations and the details form a cohesive code.
Software engineers shall commit themselves to making the analysis, specification, design, development, testing and maintenance of software a beneficial and respected profession. In accordance with their commitment to the health, safety and welfare of the public, software engineers shall adhere to the following Eight Principles:
1. PUBLIC - Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest.
2. CLIENT AND EMPLOYER - Software engineers shall act in a manner that is in the best interests of their client and employer consistent with the public interest.
3. PRODUCT - Software engineers shall ensure that their products and related modifications meet the highest professional standards possible.
4. JUDGMENT - Software engineers shall maintain integrity and independence in their professional judgment.
5. MANAGEMENT - Software engineering managers and leaders shall subscribe to and promote an ethical approach to the management of software development and maintenance.
6. PROFESSION - Software engineers shall advance the integrity and reputation of the profession consistent with the public interest.
7. COLLEAGUES - Software engineers shall be fair to and supportive of their colleagues.
8. SELF - Software engineers shall participate in lifelong learning regarding the practice of their profession and shall promote an ethical approach to the practice of the profession.
1. GENERAL MORAL IMPERATIVES.
...continuing through 1.8.
1.1 Contribute to society and human well-being.
1.2 Avoid harm to others.
Once you accept the GPL, you are pretty much in that field. That would, in my eyes, be the equivilent.
Yet another signature that refers to itself. The irony and humor is dead.
In obvious ways when it comes to assisted suicide, but in many other eways.
Ok, I hate to get all philosophical and all, but that certianly depends on the perspective of the physician administering said perscription. What if killing someone ment them having less pain? Certianly that falls under 'do no harm'? No?
I really think that similar arguments can be applied generously and evenly on the rest of your complaints, and they will not hold water.
So, maybe it's not the best argument...
http://www.eveeieyhfgfcdoosammgwsnboivvbsczxlzg
--Metrollica
The concept of a hippocratic oath is important when you consider that surgery is one human life "playing god", or in a strong position of power over another. How can be there be such a relationship in programming?
There are two ways to look at thist:
a. There are commercial software applications that are going to be used in life threatening applications. Medical software is a growing industry. As soon as someone dies as a result of your medical software, or even when a doctor was using it, expect a lawsuit. The standard threats of legality and fear of punishment are the motivators when writing software for that kind of industry. Therefore, in the commercial world, it is (in the most part, and especially in code with a more serious use than KaZaA) self regulating.
b. Software, being the way that it is, is very easy to modify -- sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Any kid can take an open source program, hack in their own viral segment, and then release it. While forking isn't that bad a problem in the OSS community, and in some cases is a very good thing, if Windows ever got publically open-sourced I know that hundreds of kids would go through and change every occurence of "Microsoft Windows" to "my l33t h4x0r cl0n3 0s" in the source code. Hell, I hex-edited command.com back in the day for a laugh. But I didn't know enough to do anything but change strings.
That's the clincher - only people that know what they are doing can become a registered medical practitioner, as opposed to any 12 year old who can be a "software programmmer." I propose a simple return to the Internet of a few years back, where you had to be relatively smart, but not a rocket scientist, to get online. There were no "Compile, link and run this downloaded code" buttons in flash IDEs. I hope that the development of Internet2, or whatever it turns out to be, means that we can return to a bit more geek-academic-centric network, instead of an advertising and pr0n festival.
If it wasn't for the kids hacking code that started through a vanity desire, we wouldn't have half the cool technologies OSS has today. You have to put up with the good and the bad, and filter through it. For every Brilliant Digital there will be a Lavasoft protecting us, eventually.
It specifically forbids giving poisions.
I think the only way for this to work is if their were are powerful programmers union that supported it. Otherwise as other posters have pointed out, you could just be fired and some person who really doesn't care about morals would do the work.
Read it
The world is a dangerous place. You can't account for every possibility.
Beyond that, the military-industrial complex relies far too heavily on computer programmers. If they swore to first do no harm, they wouldn't be able to use computers to design and control weapons systems. There'd go the economy. We need to kill kill kill in order to remain rich rich rich.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
To have a such a thing would normally go hand in hand with the industry having a professional body that both unifies the professionals within that industry and controls access to the profession through some meritocratic discrimination.
Industry bodies in software and electronics seem to have avoided this so far. The most influential body in the industry is probably the IEEE. Thier influence has been far more prevalent in the techincal standards arena rather than the standardization of the skills of its own members.
It is probably worth exploring the model in the medical, accounting and legal industries. All three are considered elitist, insular and self serving.
To have the benefits of being in such a club you would also need to conceed the limitations of freedom that go along with it. You would not be able to just sit, design, code and sell work. You would first need to be tested, certified and admitted to the club and be subject to review or exclusion from the club based on your behaviour.
Open or free software may get labelled as 'unsafe' since it has contributions from 'uncertified' coders.
Thus I suspect the ramifications of professionalisation are a little to much to swallow for many used to the relative freedoms of the hi tech industry.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Now that three lawyers get involved with everything a coder touches, it is regrettably likely that coders will wind up being named as defendants and codefendants in various lawsuits if they do anything questionable. You can easily see PHB's dodging responsibility by saying "We never told him to do _that_." If it's just a lawsuit, you can probably feel safe if you have a written spec signed by your boss and it hasn't gone into the shredder. A coder should have some right to request a written spec signed by the boss, which you don't. But even if you do, you don't have the right to take a copy off premises, do you? And if some lawyer or prosecutor takes a more aggressive position and spins your work into a criminal or DMCA violation, now what? What happy coder boy has money to defend crap like that? Look at Skylarov and Randall Schwartz for examples of guys who got their pocket protectors caught in the legal machinery. I assure you this is a game of chance. Who'll be the next to try their skill?
I thought that coders worked for the boss?
Seriously. How would your boss like it if he found out that you wouldn't add a feature like banner ads on an ICQ window because you took some kind of oath? I realize that the question asked in the submission, probably doesn't include things like this, but still.
Don't get me wrong, we shouldn't be supporting companies that like to sneak porn into children's software and other extreme similar companies, but for the most part we shouldn't need an oath.
testing out my trending skills
Are there already Malpractice suits for coding? I wouldn't imagine so, considering the you're-screwed-if-we-mess-up-attitude of the EULAs you have to accept when installing software. If there were a hippocratic oath, though, do you think that would change it so they ARE responsible? Then there'd probably be LOTS of "malpractice" type lawsuits from anyone who manages to make the software cause some sort of harm to their computer. I bet there would be a lot of people TRYING to make it do that..
I understand that life's not fair, just why is it never unfair in my favor?
I like this, plus you give a ring that gives you secret powers. (opps, let that cat out of the bag)
I am an Engineer, in my profession I take deep pride. To it I owe solemn obligations.
Since the Stone Age, human progress has been spurred by the engineering genius. Engineers have made usable Nature's vast resources of material and energy for Humanity's [Mankind's] benefit. Engineers have vitalized and turned to practical use the principles of science and the means of technology. Were it not for this heritage of accumulated experience, my efforts would be feeble.
As an Engineer, I pledge to practice integrity and fair dealing, tolerance and respect, and to uphold devotion to the standards and the dignity of my profession, conscious always that my skill carries with it the obligation to serve humanity by making the best use of Earth's precious wealth.
As an Engineer[, in humility and with the need for Divine guidance,] I shall participate in none but honest enterprises. When needed, my skill and knowledge shall be given without reservation for the public good. In the performance of duty and in fidelity to my profession, I shall give the utmost.
-Jay Thomas
http://www.uiuc.edu/~jthomas2
This was discussed in some length in an old /. thread (http://slashdot.org/features/99/09/02/2038236.sht ml). I'll repeat some pertinent comments.
...
Every profession, once it reaches a point of maturity (I'll leave it up to the pundits as to whether IT has hit that sweet spot yet) establishes a set of customs or cultural norms that, if nothing else, help protect themselves from excesses and self destruction and help define their purpose for existance. The doctors have their Hippocratic Oath, lawyers their client-attorny priviledge, and the largest corporations a distinctive cultural mindset. In fact this is a phenomenum that ESR has detailed quite nicely in his writings about the hacker community and open source development.
The question is that if the computing industry is to move from being seen as the province of self-absorbed geeks and nerds, to the level of expertise and professional found in top-notch surgical teams (and I believe the level at the top of technical mastery of details is on a par), I would have to argue that a code of conduct be ennunciated so at least we can define a standard for members to be identified with.
Some basic customs which I note have been enshrined in some form or another
- respect/acknowledge the work of (open-source) contributors (attribution of effort)
- understand the licensing/distribution arrangements (offer from the coder/group)
- document how you expect your work/API to be used/accessed
LL
True Story. /.er
I used to work for a small software company. When we where asked to create code that would allow us to record the users use of the software (websites visited ect) without there knowledge (End-User License Agreement included it, but thats another story) One of the coders said during a lunch break to some friends that he would not only refuse to code it, but he would tell anyone (press ect.) who would listen. He was called down to the big offices later that day, then was packing his bag that friday.
Honestly, I value my rare job way to much, and so do my co-workers.
BTW this "che" of ours was a big
Programming isn't a life-threatening occupation such as many medical occupations. In programming, if people don't have ethics enough not to program evil applications, then they are going to do it anyways no matter how many oaths you make them take. And if the majority of people DO take this oath, and abide by it, then all it would do is artifically inflate the wages of people that ARE willing to do the "unethical" work. It's a lose-lose situation for everyone. Human nature is flawed; deal with it.
http://www.eveeieyhfgfcdoosammgwsnboivvbsczxlzg
--Metrollica
I swear that I shall do my best to prevent any code I write from being used to gather users information without their consent. And that if I do not comment my code in a clear and explict manner anyone who attempts to read my code has the duty to beat me for causing humanity to suffer.
The great advantage of having a reputation for being stupid: People are less suspicious of you.
A major push in medicine is Hospice care. The goal is allowing people to die as they wish in comfort and peace.
Well.. doesn't this mean that all those programers at micro$oft would have to quit? They are making plently of programs that Harm the user :-D...
oh joy! pruning shears i loves them pruning shears!
The porn sites convince themselves that people under 21 won't click on the links if a button says so, or like M$FT wants that everyone pledge their asses to Bill G because of the EULA.
The oaths are more symbolic, and people should always assume the worst -- as they say, "Be courteous, and always carry a knife."
S
For some reason, an ethics code with doctors seems to work better than with other professions. I think it may have to do with the very real feeling of holding someone's life in your hands. Anywhere else I have seen ethics codes, there are more like suggestions.
Lawyers have a enourmous ethics codes. THey will actually go to court about violating ethics codes. There is an ENTIRE FIELD OF LAW devoted to lawyers violating ethic codes.
True, these are probably the absolute ends of the sprectrum as you can get, but it seems like ethic codes are more suggestive nowadays than anything. Especially in computer fields, where the objective is to get the machine to do things that were unthinkable months ago. When was the last time there was a class of coding ethics asking not whether you can do something, but whether you should.
You are not responsible for what others may do after you take a prinicpled stand. If there is something that you feel is morally wrong and you refuse to do it you have met your obligation. If someone else is willing to do it, that is their decision, as everyone has to act according to what they feel is best. Just because you believe something is wrong doesn't mean that everyone does, and your ethical decisions are not binding on the entire world.
Read it. It's not exactly followed 100% anymore...
--
I SWEAR by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation- to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. I will not cut persons laboring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further from the seduction of females or males, of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional practice or not, in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times! But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot!
Who decides what causes the public good and what isn't so good? Where do we draw that line? Some hard edgers might say that taking data of any sort is bad, others may say it's ok to take anonymous usage stats or whatever.
The fact of the matter is that in almost every case, taking an ethical stand is a costly thing. It can cost your job, your reputation, even your life. Now, it's not likely going to cost you your life if you take an ethical stand in your coding, but why should the computer world be any different than any other?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
How can you even QUESTION for a moment commiting to the oath? I can't believe you all. "If I don't do evil, somebody else will."
What the hell kind of justification is that? Are you a machine or a person?
I quit my job when I was told to change the privacy policy statement on our web page. Were we going to notify people? Yeah, eventually they did- opt out policy, of course.
Check this out- they decided they wanted to sell as much personal information as possible. But they had to get peoples "consent". So they sent out two test 'notification' messages, one allowing people to opt-in, and one allowing people to opt-out, 5,000 people each. In both cases, they got only 5% response, either from people saying "yes, it's okay" or "no, it's not okay (FUCK YOU WE HATE YOU NOW)". I remember the Customer Service ladies joking about the hate mail we got back, as if these people were loonies for not wanting us to do this. (Oh yes, btw- we were truste approved..) When they found what everyone already knew- that people didn't respond either way, they said, "Oh, well, we'll just do opt-out", and sent out the notification. We got a lot of angry email after that, but it changed nothing.
I argued with my PM, who relayed my "concern" to our CTO. The CTO is an aristocrat and sees the wealthy as the custodians of society. It's right for him to do this, because the money will be used towards "proper" ends.
I left the company.
I shun all those who remained.
I shun all of the PMs who sat back and made up justifications for their transgressions. I shun the CTO's and investors who view themselves as the managers of the world.
Always have a back-up store of money, so that you aren't tempted to do evil in order to live.
Pussies who say that capitalism is good, but then violate the Golden Rule ("They're slackers anyways; They should read the contracts more carefully") drive me up the wall. Coworkers that claim that "If I don't, someone else will" drive me up the wall. The folks making the decisions saw it as their duty to guide the human race; They were manipulating people for their own good, and the sake of progress.
Fucking bastards.
Bee Ay eS Tee Ay aRe Dee eSs.
BASTARDS!
Shame on you!
big companies see these kinda of ethics in programmers as a liability and not an asset.
I swear by Apollo the physician Kernighan the teacher, and Aesculapius Ritchie, and Health Linux, and All-heal Open-source, and all the gods and goddesses programmers and unix gurus, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation- to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance code with him, and relieve his necessities fix his buffer overflows if required; to look upon his offspring programs in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine programming, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine virii to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman script kiddie a pessary r00t kit to produce abortion internet havoc. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. I will not cut persons laboring under the stone monitor, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further from the seduction of females or males (yeah right), of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional practice or not, in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times! But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot!
There are several high paying, unreputable career paths that a computer programmer with no values can follow. I think that a persons "oath" is based on their own personal job selection. Most companies that behave badly towards the public do so in a broad range of activities. A pornography company is easy to spot, and I think most companies involved with spyware are easy to spot as well. I would choose not to work for a company like this.
If your company has a change of policy and wants to add some of these features to an already existing product, then the issue you raise is more interesting. A supporter of green peace can get fired if they interfere with their empoyers workplace and I think programmers are the same. However, I do believe that there is a much larger base of moral programmers out there than the press would have us believe. Having a "moral" software movement that you could belong to would be an interesting practice. Several products such as Ad-Aware clearly demonstrate that their are programmers who are interested in protecting the public. I think that having knowledgable people running a computer ethics board like the Better Business Bureau would be a great idea.
My 2 cents.
What would be wrong with a programmer's or software engineer's union? They way I see it, it could be a good way to ensure more quality in produced code, and a way to prevent unethical coding practices. Not only that, but programmer's would have some greater amount of job security. Not being very well informed about unions and the way that their inner workings go, I think that a programmer's union could do some good.
to stop worshipping the almightly dollar.
If you are working for a company then I imagine you'll be expected to take on or at very least put up with the ethics of that company, you can stand by your principles and quit, making your reasons calmly and clearly known.
I'm not entirely sure where the law stands on an employer who gains your services by describing one job spec, then when you are onboard expecting you to do something completely different, something which may have caused you to not waste your time in the first place.
I imagine creating some sort of 'affiliation' which could be listed on a CV making clear what the members find 'un-acceptable' in a development environment could work very well, but I have no idea as to such a setups legal standing should it come to the crunch?
First, kill all the lawyers.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
A) If you have a degree you are over qualified and they might not hire you.
B) McDonald's doesn't actually flip burgers anymore! they cook both sides at once. I almost cried when i heard my fallback profession of flipping burgers and mickey D's ceased to exist.
Now when I go out into the real world I have nothing to hope for.
For some reason slashdot isn't letting me use . Sigh...
I swear by Apollo the physician Kernighan the teacher, and Aesculapius Ritchie, and Health Linux, and All-heal Open-source, and all the gods and goddesses programmers and unix gurus, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation- to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance code with him, and relieve his necessities fix his buffer overflows if required; to look upon his offspring programs in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine programming, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine virii to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman script kiddie a pessary r00t kit to produce abortion internet havoc. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art. I will not cut persons laboring under the stone monitor, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further from the seduction of females or males (yeah right), of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional practice or not, in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret. While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times! But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot!
Aren't we famous as a group for not maintaining independence in our professional judgement, or does this exclude the historical jihads such as:
VI or Emacs
Emacs or Xemacs
IDE or Basic Editor (Hmm, a trend)
Command Line or GUI
BSD or GPL
Windows or bend over (which would you prefer?)
What's an ommendom? Even accounting for a likely misspelling, the closest approximation that evaluates to a real word is omentum but I doubt you're talking about that.
Thus far, tons of the responses seems to be "If you refuse, they'll just fire you and hire someone else - there are 10 other people who want your job".
It's exactly this reason that Unions came into existance - when a worker can be replaced because easily, the boss can do whatever he wants.
Capitalism only works when both sides are equal in the partnership. I'm sick to death of the libertarian bullshit that infests this place - "just let the market take care of it". When the marketplace is fair, it's worth considering. But the only way to make it fair is to increase the power of the workers so that they have something to bargain with.
Most everything that makes our country great - the 40 hour work week, minimum (hopefully living in more and more places) wage, sick leave - where do you think it all came from? Generosity of employers? Hell no - it came from workers standing up for their rights.
Many, many people have been killed (read any good history book) just for trying to organize. Remember that the next time you say "we don't want a union".
why should i be restricted from from putting my ones and zeroes on a magnetic piece of metal somewhere? how are you going to enforce this hippocratic oath? CODE IS SPEECH. whether you like it or not, no two ways about it. The way I look at it, it's like an artist on the canvas, crossed with a mathemetician's equations. If you don't think a program does good, don't code it, it's your perrogative no matter what. But don't restrict others from coding software that they want to code.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
This is a global industry now. If one group of coders in one country refuses to code a spammers mining tool then some other countries coders will if the price is right. It's like landmines, countries still make these things despite international outrage. Obey the mighty dollar here, codes of ethics and rules may give you peace of mind but it will not stop others from looking for profit.
"I swear by Apollo the Physician and by Asclepius and by Health and Panacea and by all the gods as well as goddesses, making them judges..."
How would the Geek Oath start?
"I swear by Boole, and Babbage, and Turing, and Knuth..."
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
3-The user will know of all processes run by the program and al, parts of the computer system it affects or alters.
You're talking about people who don't know a CD-ROM drive from a cup holder.
my personal stance on the entire issue of ethics at work or in life is "if i don't agree with something being done, i'm not going to do it". while intelligent, some programmers, just like people in any other position, are weak-willed and write to support a cause with which they don't agree. i doubt anyone who writes software to serve ads or to analyze audience demographics, etc would want the techniques employed upon themselves. it's a question of morality versus monetary gain, and, sadly, in this society many circles determine a human being's personal worth by their cash-flow. i'm sure the programmer(s) of such gems as "brilliant 3d" and "aureate" are either self-centered bastards or have somehow rationalized the legitimacy of the software. i sincerely doubt, however, that any of them infected their personal machines with such software.
"Life is great; without it, you'd be dead." -Harmony Korine
That you will lead your lives and practice your art in uprightness and honor.
That into whatsoever web site you shall enter, it shall be for the good of opt-out mailing lists to the utmost of your mouse, your holding yourselves far aloof from privacy, from the GPL, from the tempting of others to intellectual property theft.
That you will exercise your art solely for the commercial squatting of patents, and will give no bandwidth, perform no division by zero, for a mad MP3 collection, even if solicited, far less suggest it.
That whatsoever you shall see or hear of the promise of open source software which is not fitting to be spoken, you will keep inviolably secret.
These things do you swear. Let each bow the head in sign of acquiescence.
And now, if you will be true to this, your oath, may prosperity and worthless stock options be yours; the opposite, if you shall prove yourselves forsworn.
To all companies:
If any of you programmers turns down work on principle, please send it to me. Since I'm a whor^H^H^H^Hconsultant, I'm in business to make money. And I'm willing to write whatever you ask for without giving a single thought to youthful idealism.
Sincerely,
infinite9
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
And anti-business is communist, and communist is baaaad. So the answer is a categorical NO.
If I may quote one of the rights of the society:
:)
/that/ good a programmer to make some spamware? And would such a programmer actually bother trying to join the BCS in the first place?
"To establish and maintain a sound ethical foundation for the use of computers"
In my mind, programming spamware would violate this charter. However, I too doubt that there has been anyone kicked out for such an action. But I wouldn't know - not yet a member
On the other hand, the BCS has some tough qualifications. I'll have to complete my 3 year Comp Sci degree at Warwick Uni, then spend (I think) another 2 years getting practical experience (and there may be exams too...). Does it really take
Programming should be only allowed with government licensing and regulation to prevent criminal acts like DeCSS. Compilers, debuggers, electronics tools and equipment, etc. need to be banned except to those with the proper permits. Open source software is definitely going to be banned here in the near future (CBDTPA or another variant of it) for sure as well.
If you have a negative opinion of the above or have a negative opinion of drug laws, gun laws, censorship laws then you are a terrorist and need to be punished. Obey the law ALWAYS! The bigger the government the better. Socialism is here to stay. If you don't like it then you're a criminal and murderistic terrorist like Skylarov!
sorry for this rant, but:
"Blame the companies who tell the programmers what to do"
Bah. Since you're working for the company, you _are_ in effect part of the company, and share some responsability for its actions.
I wish people would try to be more consistent in their behaviour, and put their money where their mouth is. There's loads of jobs out there especially in the IT sector, even in these post-dot-com times, and I'm sure some of them don't conflict with your personal sense of ethics. Yes, they might pay a little bit less.
A soldier killing someone shares at least a part of the responsability with the chain of command that ordered the killing. People seem to find it easy to hide behind duty/a nation (just look at what happened in WWII), or more appropriate for these times, behind their company.
An oath like this is supposed to work a bit like a union - it forces everyone to be ethical, and would make sure "evil" companies can only find ethical coders (damn!). The fact that this isn't practical IRL doesn't mean you should just be unethical.
Ethical behaviour is doing the right thing, even if it does NOT yield thesame financial benefits/power/geek toys/whatever/... If you're just "ethical" when it's convenient, well...
Review: Code of Ethics for Programmers?
I apologize in advance, as it's by Jon Katz.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
I work at the College of Medicine of the University of Illinois at Chicago, which is the largest one in terms of MDs graduated annually in the US (about 400 per year).
Like many other US Medical Colleges, the oath that graduates take is the 1948 Declaration of Geneva version of the Oath of Hippocrates, which reads:
Now being admitted to the profession of medicine, I solemnly pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity. I will give respect and gratitude to my deserving teachers. I will practice medicine with conscience and dignity. The health and life of my patient will be my first consideration. I will hold in confidence all that my patient confides in me. I will maintain the honor and the noble traditions of my medical profession, My colleagues will be as my family. I will not permit consideration of race, religion, nationality, party politics, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient. I will maintain the utmost respect for human life. Even under threat I will not use my knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity. These promises I make freely and upon my honor.
As you can see, even medicine changes with the times, while trying to maintain the important features of the Oath of Hippocrates.
I used to work at an ISP. Was with the company for approximately 3 years. The company forked off an internet promotions subsidiary. My role was to be the guy who gets the technology in order to make it happen.
If you're new to this, lets be clear, internet promotion is spamming. Fuck that. I'm not going to use my (frankly, awesome) skillset to stuff junkmail in people's inboxes. How could I live with myself? So I quit. There were some other reasons as well, but this managed to be the clincher.
I run my own business now, where no one is going to pressure me to sacrifice my morals for the almighty buck. That's all the hippocratic oath I need.
"I am hired because I know what I am doing, not because I will do whatever I am told is a good idea. This might cost me bonuses, raises, promotions, and may even label me as "undesirable" by places I don't want to work at anyway, but I don't care. I will not compromise my own principles and judgement without putting up a fight. Of course, I won't always win, and I will sometimes be forced to do things I don't agree with, but if I am my objections will be known, and if I am shown to be right and problems later develop, I will shout "I told you so!" repeatedly, laugh hysterically, and do a small dance or jig as appropriate to my heritage."
-- Abigail, as reworked by Mike Sphar
However, Physicians are centrally licensed by the American Medical Association in order to prevent the widespread public harm by quacks. The same goes for Psychiatrists, Architects, Lawyers, etc. All of these groups are able to enforce their own oaths because you can be disbarred, de-licensed, etc. for violating them. Once that has happened it is a crime to practice your profession and many countries will send you to jail (for fraud if nothing else) for trying.
Similarly most patients, plaintiffs, etc. are not in a position to go over national (or even state) borders to find a cheaper (unlicensed) practitioner. Nor are many in a position of being their own legal counsel or physician (although many are forced to economically). As a result the oaths and their violations have teeth.
There is no central body controlling software developers or engineers in this way, nor do I think that there should be, per se. I believe that ethics in engineering is a valid thing (see works by Samuel C. Florman for more discussion.)
Yet, I do not think that the field can be so easily regulated. Physicians say "Do no Harm" that means "Do not kill people" Lawyers say "Do not lie" (and they mean it whatever common wisdom holds). But what does that mean for software developers?
"Do not help the wrong people get information?" Who are the "wrong people" many people (myself excluded) feel that "the government" should have any and all information it can on people as "Innocent People have nothing to hide" (John Ashcroft). Many others do not.
Similarly many people (myself included) feel that the RIAA is overstepping its bounds on trying to control users and should not be allowed to mandate national copyright control. Many others disagree, not because they are greedy bastards but because they support strong copyright.
The same questions could be made about developing weapons, Blue Boxes, and working for the DEA, etc. Because such ideas are not so clear-cut I don't think that you could easily put together a national consensus (or even a local consensus) on just what is and is not "harm." As endless language debates have shown "Clean code" is a debatable point.
That having been said, I think that ethics are a good thing, and that we as geeks should enforce them in our peers and ourselves as much as possible. This may include returning to the age-old custom of shunning sinners. At the very least we can work to see that what we do in our professional and personal development is good, and ensure that, when we have a say, no-one gets hired to our companies who doesn't measure up.
You might see also:
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
The Association for Computing Machinery
and their working group on Computers in Society
My $0.02.
Irvu.
This isn't some legislatively requried oath. It's a code of ethics. Sure it's within the realm of physical possibility that someone will require that you stamp 666 on your forehead in order to be a professional coder, but its highly unlikely.
Man, if the parent isn't an example of a slippery slope I don't know what is.
It is not a question of standing on principle but rather of sitting on principal.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Yes some coders wouldn't code, but then you would have the money suckers, that don't care and have no ethics, getting paid the big bucks to code something no one else will.
If there is a demand for something,
someone WILL supply it, no matter what!
Maybe not you, but there are lots of other underpriviledged/poor/jobless programmers
who would be willing to do this for money. Why do you think industries like child porn, porn, drugs, mafia exist!
There will always be people who will not agree to be part of this union,
and your employers will then hire them.
Remember: There will always be rebels, no matter what!
The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.
Seriously, I've had some heated debates with my manager in the past couple weeks and apart from coming away from these encounters with the feeling "I do the impossible for the unbelieving and ungrateful, why bother." To managers, have some faith in your programmers / analysts. If we fuck-up, think of tactful ways to handle it, but have some faith.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Nobody could easily identify the jurisdiction of programmers - a critical part of any union contract. Where do you draw the line regarding coding? Is it only compilable languages? What about shell scripts or HTML? VB is a compilable language, but VBScript in an active server page is interpreted at run time, not compiled. What about purchasing software? If coding is unit work, isn't purchasing software from a third party a form of union-busting? Of course not - but if you're a union janitor, and you see a contractor pushing a broom, you know you have a legitimate grievance.
The bottom line is the union was great for negotiating things like wages, hours and working conditions, but when it came to what we actually did and how we did it - the union, as much as management, had no clue.
Cliff, are you gonna pay the rent when I get fired for refusing to write code? I consider myself lucky to have a job programming. Lets get realistic.
First off, we might want to take some defensive steps against the foreign labor movement that seeks to grind us out of existence. Then we might want to try to get laws like the DMCA reversed. then we could go after other constitutional issues. THEN we might want to address the virulant and malignant system of bribery that is our government these days.
I'm sorry but I'm feeling a little overloaded at the moment. But there are easy steps that can be taken to avoid spyware.
Never trust shareware. Never.
Fine, you can name a handful of companies that are trustworthy but if
it's raining sulfuric acid, are you gonna stand out in your yard because you know that 2% of the drops will be regular water? And yes the shareware industry
is that bad.
Avoid MS operating systems.
Microsoft has been caught scanning people's drives for stuff and reporting back home many times? Update Wizard, Mediaplayer, what else? And third party components that you have to get for base functionality seem to spy on you too. Real Player, CuteFTP, the various P2P stuff. It's just a festering hole as far as privacy goes. the deck is stacked against you from the day you install it. the vultures are circling even as you hit the power button for the first boot.
Don't be a dumbass.
If you want to surf all over the place with internet explorer with cookies, javascript, java, vb, and other assorted crap just so you don't "miss out", tough shit. the writing has been on the wall for YEARS about the risks of those things.
Run a filtering proxy and spyware sniffer
Junkbuster, zonealarm, ad-aware etc.
There you go, all safe and sound. Myself, I just run Linux and for whatever reason I've not been exposed to much the topic refers to.
What makes you think it would work for programmers? Just because they make (far) less money? :)
We're having enough trouble interpreting this guy's post!
Say you don't want to contribute new ideas to the US military for autonomous killing machines. So you work on medical imaging instead. You invent a new algorithm for identifying red blood cells.
Ah, but the algorithm can detect tanks. This is a real case from the 1980s - one ethical member of our research group avoided the military funded grants, wanting to stay non-violent. In the technical report library one day our technical officer from DARPA was hunting up reports and took some written by our ethical member. Loved the reports.
It is a foundational principle of computer science that you can't draw absolute lines in evaluating algorthms (Rice's theorem and all that.) This algorithm, ethical; this algorithm, unethical. Not a decidable proposition.
That makes research in computer science a muddy ethical venue. You can't pretend your work is pure, like G.H. Hardy in "Apology of a Mathematician" who claimed his mathematical research never killed anyone; CP Snow noted that Hardy trained the british scientists who fought WWII.
again, my two cents. though i am a beginning programmer, and a crappy one at that (HTML leaves me high and dry, but i am expanding fast), i still have basic ideas. i think programmers should take an oath to not program anything destructive, unless confronted by the goverment. now, if they are nearing the border, i think all programmers should type a 5 page report (at minimum) on why their program is not a hazard to users. ah, but what do i know? now i want my change (view sig)
If we give our two cents, but it's a penny for our thoughts, do we get change back?
I think you would have to narrowly define "public". What about folks who write software to launch and deliver an ICMB - since destruction and killing is sort of the idea.
True enough, so let's get to the real meat of the issue.
<P>
Doctors take this oath, and follow other rules, as part of being a <b>certified</b> profession. To be a certified profession means there is a governing body, and often the government, which defines whether you are a doctor or not, and defines whether you can practice medicine.
<P>
Certification makes sense in a very limited set of professions where the practicioner will be doing something life-critical like cutting you open, or defending your freedom in court, or designing a bridge for you -- and just as importantly, in cases where you have a consulting relationship with the professional rather than an employment one.
<P>
If you're going to trust somebody you barely know with your life for a short-term contract, you bet you want some external means of certifying that they are capable of the job.
<P>
But with a very few exceptions, programming and sysadmin are not like this. THere are of course many consultants, but most are actually employees. Instead of the government defining who is a programmer, the employer decides who they want to hire.
<P>
What would an oath for programmers mean? Would there be a certifying body checking things? Would it get to define who was a programmer? Would somebody not be allowed to be a programmer if they didn't take the oath?
<P>
That's not what we want.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Geek Oath would be even worse off when it comes to gray areas. For example:
I used to work at a (now defunct, like the rest of 'em) dot-com. Our software was, by most definitions, spyware: If you downloaded and installed our software, it would keep track of what you listened to (via pretty much any media player -- we had the top twelve or so covered by the end) and send that info to our servers, which would respond with a wealth of information -- current news, tour dates in your area if you so chose, new releases, etc. The longer you listened, the more information you would get -- "Oh, I realize you're not listening to Radiohead right now, but by the way they've got an album coming out..."
Now: a) We never attempted to sneak onto someone's system; b) We made the uninstall as painless and obvious as possible; c) We never hid the fact that we were sending back listening statistics. But still, we *were* monitoring what you were listening to.
So would I have been in violation of this theoretical Geek Oath?
(Save your flames and your "I'd never!"s -- fact is, a lot of people did, myself included. It just Didn't Work Out, but our management handled the end -- once it was obvious that it was inevitable -- very well.)
First of all - please read the Modern Hippocratic oath to get a feel of the sheer gravity that the oath actually represents. Then imagine the programmers oath
"Wherever I can, I will code many hidden easter eggs without the project managers consent or knowledge to provide the end users something to do. Also, I shall endeaver to ingest large quantities of mountain dew."
I mean, I can think of a few professions above programmers I want to take an oath (How about the short order cook that spit in your food last week huh?)
Second of all - How can you even compare the concept of upholding the ability to save and improve physically the life of an indivdual without corruption to a programmer? How is coding spam similar to endangering a life for unethical pursuits?
Third of all - WHO CARES? Oaths are meaningless in a captalistic society such as ours. Want proof? Lets take a quick tour down career avenue and look at the professions that take oaths - Lawyers (hmm, they seem to be a respectable bunch), Elected Officials (don't get me started), Judiciaries (Not too bad in his arena) and Public Safety officals (Rodney King, Malice Green, etc. etc.) Not to open a can of worms but the ORIGINAL Hippocratic Oath actually had a section condeming a doctor to perform an abortion so theoretically doctors that perform abortion break their oaths (I agree to the modern version expressed above and my political viewpoints on abortion are hopefully not reflected!)
To compare the importance of upholding the importance of ethics in the medical profession to a coder writing spam, spyware or other such "annoyances" is ABSURD.
Jesse Wolfe Sr. Manager Systems Integration
You're right, I'll qualify my previous statement: it's not spyware that's the problem, it's misrepresentation of the software. So the unethical part of the coding might be as simple as having a misleading splash screen or terms & conditions page. (or packaging spyware along with another unrelated product without alerting the user)
I agree that just coding or distributing spyware without the intention of using it unethically should not be regulated in any way.
I don't see this happening, for many reasons:
First, there are way too many definitions of what "harms the public": contrary to the general well-being of the public, contrary to the wishes of the public, harmful to a small group of people, Windows, annoying but not malicious, etc.
Second, programs may cause harm to a half the populace, but success to the other half. Where is the line drawn?
Third, not enough people will accept this because they will see a way of making more money picking up jobs that others left because of their beliefs.
It's a good idea, but impractical.
Hippopocrates wrote the oath because the physicians of his time abused their knowledge, became vindictive, capricious and arbitrary.
Say, you don't think a sys-admin would ever do that, do you?
=brian
Programmers are Mercenaries, not Samauri. We are available to the highest bidder. There is no reason to be loyal to your employer, to your community, or to society at large. If you dont code it, there ARE others that will.
This isnt a troll, just point out some truth.
If you want to be any concern to a company, you need to be able to effect their profits. 1 Coder or a group of programmers will not make a difference. Unless its ALL the programmers in the company. You need to be able to effect productivity with walk outs, slow downs, or a strike.
The old saying "The man who owns the gold makes the rules.." is true. Effect his gold and you can change his direction.
But hey, its nice to talk openly about what we would "Like to do..." But if you want change, Start the movement, get political power, start a union, get people together, get some power. Or be the Rosa Parks of ethics, and lose your job.
I will give everyone a little hint, if you do not have the code, don't run it. That simple rule will keep your computer happy and your data to yourself.
Got Code?
...the ACM Code of Ethics?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Despite the numerous violations of the typocratic oath, some implimentations Microsoft deliver are extremely efficient and useful in the commercial world. An example of this is the clipart system of Office2k. If you don't find the clipart you like, you click the WWW button, you choose which cliparts you want to install, and you click install. This is just one of the many implimentations MS created to benefit the consumer.
Don't get me wrong though, linux is where my heart is, but you can't look at MS Office and not be impressed.
Yet another signature that refers to itself. The irony and humor is dead.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
> Should programmers be able to refuse to write code that harms the public more than it helps?
Nice idea, but that'd put Microsoft right out of business.
Will that mean that it will be possible to put someone to jail for illegal practice of coding?
I thought, you the funky bunch, used Linux, and therefore you weren't subject to all that spyware adwares etc?
Come on, it's just programming, and programmers in the sensible fields (military, medical) are self regulating.
There's problems far more serious that kazaa et tralala.
Your machine is not the center of the Universe, get a life.
I suggest you take a look outside? Due to my continued inability to find a job of ANY kind I will be homeless come Friday at 5pm. Granted I am in South Dakota and it's not a great place to try to find a job, there are many out of work techies searching desperately for good IT work when none exists.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
To go back to the example of doctors, it both amuses me and disturbs me that a family can direct their vet to show more 'humane' treatment to a terminally ill dog, then they can direct their doctor to so treat a human relative.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Consider a medical database. If done correctly, it can help care givers get access to vital information. This same information can be misused by insurance companies to deny coverage.
Let's be realistic here. We're not some super special group in society. We're (most of us, anyway), are employees for companies, and to maintain that employment, we do the job we're given. If we disagree with it in principle, we have the option of pursuing other work.
What would an "oath" do anyway? Would it keep sleazy programmers from working for sleazy companies? Would it get the guy who writes a virus to not write a virus?
Doctors are a different story. Many of them deal with life and death on a regular basis. We programmers, generally, do not.
And to what should this theoretical oath extend? What about a programmer who works on a guidance system for a cruise missile? Some may find that unethical, others may not.
I think the motive is good, but I just don't think that it could amount to anything of importance, unfortunately. I think we ought to teach more about computer ethics in schools. A computer is like any other tool. It can be used for good or it can be used for bad. We need to find a way to stop young people from indulging their tendencies to destroy things (a.k.a. writing a virus or hacking into systems to deface web pages or do real damage), and we ought to be teaching it early on. This, I think, would have a more direct effect.
So....why can't we certify politicians? I mean...they ARE running our country!
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...especially if programmers only followed it as closely as doctors do:
"I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion."
Of course. In the USA and most western countries, nobody is required to engage in conduct they believe is illegal, unethical, unsafe, or unpleasant -- with the exception of certain positions in the military, who are required to follow the chain of command in most circumstances.
Of course, there are economic pressures: if the only living-wage job in your community for which you are qualified is to work in a coal mine, or in a prison, or writing virus code, then you must make an economic decision: Balancing.
Nobody has to write bad code. If you believe that your shop should never release code unless it includes sixteen types of "defensive code" (resisting viruses and privacy-invading applets and so on), then you tell your employer those terms, and your employer will decide which action to pursue: ending your employment, or changing its practices.
We have all had those "moments" in our lives where we had to make a decision about Right and Wrong. If I do this, is it Right or is it Wrong? If I do this, can I accept the consequences? If I do this, will I be able to respect myself as a person? If I do this, how can I explain myself later to my child?
Sometimes, the decisions are easy: your employer assigns you to load toxic waste into drums and to pour it into a river. Sometimes, the decisions are really hard: your team has spent 1,000 hours testing your code and you are pretty sure that it's good, but you really wish that you had more time for testing, or a different regimen for testing, and now your team leader announces that he's going to release the code -- it certainly makes a difference if the code we are talking about is Doom III or the operating program for a nuclear reactor.
Everybody has a different benchmark. I've heard lots of stories, all of them quite respectable:
- I can't do this because if I ever run for public office, this would ruin my chances
- My religion prohibits this
- This violates the "golden rule" (do unto others...)
- My professional ethics prohibit this
- I cannot do this and still be a role model for my child
- This violates my personal beliefs
- This is just, plain wrong, and I won't do it.
In my opinion, you should use whatever test makes you pause and refuse as often as possible. When someone suggests that the problem is that "we might get caught," I lose all respect for that person: that statement already accepts that the action is wrong (nobody ever says "I'd love to help you rescue that child from the burning building, but I'm afraid I might get caught").Sure, there are things we do that we wouldn't want to discuss with our kids -- not because they are "wrong" but because they are personal or unpleasant or simply not appropriate to discuss with a child.
Life is full of hard choices. I think that 99% of the time, we know what is the "right" thing to do. We often recognize that we are doing something 'wrong' and we have lots of excuses, and some of them feel quite tolerable (I need this job, my kids need health insurance, little harm will come, or harm is quite unlikely).
A long time ago, I found that when I was in certain kinds of situations, I found it "necessary" to do certain things. It was my job, it was legal, it was appropriate -- but it was unpleasant and people disliked me because of it. I had to decide whether I wanted to be the kind of person who did those things. I decided that I did not want to be that kind of person, and I recognized that I could not do my job competently without being that kind of person. I quit my job and changed my profession.
And now, to the question at hand:
> "Should [programmers] code defensively to prevent software and information being misused for unintended purposes? And how do we protect such programmers from being dismissed unfairly for standing on principle?"
Okay, now we are looking at something much less clear. What kind of application are we talking about, and what kind of abuse or misuse are we worried about?
There are various issues to balance, including potential legal liability, potential adverse publicity and adverse market response, and of course potential harm to the public.
Legal liability is a good starting point. If I am writing the code for a new version of a Microsoft operating system, and I already know that there are 1,000 viruses that attack Windows systems, I probably would be legally liable for releasing a product that is vulnerable to one of those existing viruses, if I could easily and inexpensively block them. An internet-ready operating system with no protection against known viruses, would be a defective product, and I'd probably be legally responsible for the damages, at least to consumers. Even if legal liability were avoided (for example, through enforceable contracts), the adverse publicity and of course the complete failure of the operating system to work, would result in complete market failure: people would not buy this product or my other products.
Now, let's look to the harder case. Suppose I am responsible for the coding for Doom III, a complex computer game that (I assume) includes internet-play. I know there are viruses out there, and I know that there are malicious people out there. I also suspect that someone could write a virus that would target my widely software, attaching itself and perhaps even trying to propegate to other users or distribute private data or system-access information by modifying the code that allows internet play. Must I write code to resist that potential virus? No matter what I do, a clever cracker will find a way to circumvent my efforts -- but what must I do? How much time, what portion of my budget, should be spent to fighting crime?
Basically, it's a balancing act.
Try another example: your employer asks you to write a database or accounting program. You know that it is quite likely that your program will be purchased and used by drug traffickers to track their shipments and profits. What duty do you have to prevent such uses, or to detect such uses and report them to law enforcement?
Try another example: your employer asks you to write a Napster-like computer program that will allow people to share files. You know that some people will misuse the program (sharing copyrighted materials), but you also know that many people will use the program lawfully.
Now, suppose you work for one of these latter two companies, and you decide that your employer is not doing enough to prevent misuse, and you refuse to write certain code, but you also refuse to resign. Maybe your employer's attorneys present you with a "severance agreement" that includes a generous cash severance and a confidentiality clause. Or maybe you already signed a confidentiality agreement, and your employer fires you with no severance.
Damn, I have to side with the employer. There's nothing illegal going on, and you aren't being asked to do something unsafe or improper -- you simply have chosen a set of personal ethical standards that conflict with your employer. So I'd probably agree that your employer could fire you, but I might be uncomfortable enforcing the confidentiality agreement, at least insofar as it might seek to prevent you from talking to appropriate law-enforcement agencies.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
Given the pathetic state of the quality of software, I can't believe someone is raising this topic. When Windows and Linux aren't riddled with bugs thanks to buffer overflows (probably the purest example of lazy coding you could name), then we can start talking about things like whether programmers should write spyware and pledge to "do no harm". Until all programmers (including myself) clean up our act quality-wise, we have no right to demand anything from anyone.
At a previous job I was asked to write spam software and refused. Had a long calm discussion with my boss afterwards and was able to keep my job and not have to write the icky software.
Cynical Answers:
"With the increase in spyware, spam, etc, is it time for a Hippocratic Oath for Programmers?
No. I enjoy these things. I want all my software to de-install other software behind my back. More, More, More! Oh, and please make sure you send me spam every minute! I really, really, really like it!
>Should programmers be able to refuse to write code that harms the public more than it helps?
No. I think coders that do these things should be given raises.
>Should they code defensively to prevent software and information being misused for unintended purposes?
You mean like being used to delete other people's adware? HELL NO.
>And how do we protect such programmers from being dismissed unfairly for standing on principle?
You could put them in jail.
i always wanted to know what exactly it has to do with hippo's
The Well Known Fat Bloke
Doctors have to physically be there to do harm. Software is much harder to contain, as Open Source has proven. It's not possible to the same extent, but a programmer can perform due diligence to the extent the schedule allows.
that settling on what truly these ethics are. i mean, are you trying to say that coding something like a better file transfer program that could harm the entertainment industry is wrong, or putting in something like spyware/dist. computing/etc. is wrong? I think in the recent years the ethics are really debatable and vary greatly among developers.
...what about reverse-engineering? would that be wrong? it could *harm* too.
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why can't we certify politicians?
Some of them are certainly certifiable...
The basic idea behind the ACM code of ethics, which was first developed in the 1960's (but has been amended many times since) is to avoid being specific or definitive in any way. There are good reasons for this that were published in an ACM paper titled "Rules for Ethics in Information Processing", by Donn B. Parker in the ACM journal for March, 1968, describing the reasons that the code of ethics was designed how it is.
If you look at the code of ethics carefully, there are virtually no declarations in the entire thing that state "thou shalt not" or "thou shalt". If there's anything that says that, it puts the judgement of what it means on the member themselves.
When it comes down to it, the code of ethics is more of a requirement that ACM members use their common sense and do what they truly believe is right and ethical in a way that is within reason acceptable to society. Every single person has their own idea of what is ethical, and the boundaries are very fuzzy. As soon as you start drawing lines, you create as many problems as you solve.
It has been used in the past to kick people out of the organisation. I think one of the first times it was used was to dismiss a member who'd put workarounds in some banking software so that his own account had certain financial advantages over everyone else's... or something similar. He was put before a committee representing ACM, he couldn't ethicly justify what he'd done in a way that satisfied the committee, and so he was thrown out.
The ACM paper above is a good read about why it isn't a good idea to have a strict code of ethics. Personally I think the ACM approach is a good way to do it.
Please don't mod this up--I'm capped, and some dickless coward will no doubt come after with an "Overrated"--please feel free to mod it down, though.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
How are you going to measure that? People buy bad software on the reputation of the company, because measuring the goodness of software is too hard.
A programer who writes code that harms people is a programer who wouldn't follow an oath. Thiers no need for one, and if it was inforced it would be empty.
Nice idea, but you can't get there from here.
Some days it's horribly obvious that too many /. readers really don't know any serious computer professionals. These aren't new issues, but they've never been brought to the attention of this community.
--Gus
"I took an oath to do no harm through code!"
"How fascinating... you're fired!"
But what am I thinking... don't the MBAs take a similar oath?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm sure this will get be flame-broiled for being racist by those who don't read past the first paragraph, but.. Here's my take on things.
You're wasting your time if you think you can define what "ethical conduct" means before you define what it means to be "a professional" in the first place.
It seems to me that among most American (Both N. and S.) and European system administrators and programmers, the issue of workplace ethic is well known, and adhered to fervently. Unix administrators in particular, put a great deal of emphasis on accountability, responsibility, and appropriate conduct. However, in the past decade or so i've been working in this industry, the unspoken code of honor and commonality of ethics abruptly ends when dealing with eastern European, Asian, and African programmers/administrators.
The reasons for this are completely cultural -- They have nothing to do with race. The cultural differences between those of us here in the Americas and those of IT professionals from abroad stem from what is valued more in that person's culture. In Western culture, extensibility, usability, robustness and coherency of design are the principles we put the greatest importance on---Whatever gets the job done right, regardless of how much time it takes. In other parts of the world, these principles take a back seat to facets like practicality, speed, and overall function---Whatever solves the problem the quickest, regardless of quality.
Its been the cause of every single workplace conflict i've seen in the past 10 years. One party (manager or programmer) wants the job done quickly -- The other party (manager or programmer) wants to do it right. An American programmer goes nuts trying to work within a group of Indian programmers who in his mind "write half-assed code, cut corners, and cover up mistakes."
Meanwhile, an Indian programmer goes nuts trying to work within a group of American programmers, who in his mind are slow, lazy and underproductive team members.
The whole entanglement of "ethics" stems from the differences in priorities. As anedcotal evidence, look at the reigons of the world where software piracy is rampant. A lack of adherence to accepted practices goes hand in hand with piracy, does it not? WHy does piracy flourish in some areas while remaining an underground black market in others? The answer seems purely obvious to me...And as long you're going to have a dichotomy that severe within the industry, there will never be universally agreed-upon "code of ethics" or "Hippocratic Oath" among IT professionals. It just isn't possible, if you intend on mixing two radically different definitions of what it means to be "a professional."
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
There are commercial software applications that are going to be used in life threatening applications. Medical software is a growing industry. As soon as someone dies as a result of your medical software, or even when a doctor was using it, expect a lawsuit. The standard threats of legality and fear of punishment are the motivators when writing software for that kind of industry. Therefore, in the commercial world, it is (in the most part, and especially in code with a more serious use than KaZaA) self regulating.
i work in a hospital, i use hospital software every day, it's an IT environment that would make anyone cry who 'gets it:' buggy-as-hell software that does not catch Rx interactions, let alone disease-state/Rx interactions. our particular institution utilizes an amalgam of 3 totally seperate software venders for our needs, which basically means nothing's compatitible with anything else as they are all using micro$oftian 'incompatibility' tactics to pressure their clients into using 100% of the services offered by their specific vendor... we were recently looking at purchasing an (obscenely expensive POS) system/protocol to track individual Rx dosages given to patients @ bedside utilizing a system of barcodes and HUGE amounts of tracking & logging, and the system wasn't even capible of catching duplicate therapy. for example you're a patient at our institution and recieve 2mg of morphine in a 1mL syringe for pain, which the MD has written for you to recieve 2-8mg every 4-6 hours as needed, 1 minute after recieving your morphine a different nurse grabs a morphine 8mg/1mL syringe and gives that to you... this system would not recognize that you'd just recieved morphine as it thinks they're two seperate drugs, although they're really only 2 different concentrations. if these 'state of the art' and 'cutting edge' systems can't even figure out when someone's getting 2 doses of the exact same drug are you going to expect them to notice if you're getting Darvon, Demerol, Oxycontin, Hydrocodone, Codeine, et al. which will potentiate the effects of your morphine? and dream on if it catches non-opiate synergistic agents like Versed, Luminal, or any of the 10 billion other drugs which cause CNS suppression.
point being this: have med errors occured as a result of out software?-undoubtably, yes. have deaths occured?-probably not. but will our software vendors ever be held accountable for providing shitty service?-no. why?-because we already sign disclaimers absolving them from litigation. additionally it is the ultimate responsibility of hospital employees to prevent deleterous errors, and no jury today would shift the blame...
why do we use these services? because, like any bass-ackwards corporation: the people utalizing the software are not the people buying it, which provides for little if any direct financial incentive for these companies to improve ther products. all and all if there's self-regulation in this facet of software design i have yet to see it. but if the individuals whom work for these companies would refuse to allow their mega-patched bloatware packages to reach the market things would be 1000x better on my end.
just my 2*10^(-2)
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
Oath or not, there is always going to be someone willing to do something, specially when money is involved. And given the current so called 'Slump' in the industry, there will be a lot more programmers willing to 'go there' and write code to their employer's spec's, even if it is to obtain information, legally or not, from an unsuspecting user.
But even without a low in employment numbers, there is no sort of test of virtues to be a coder.
======
Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish. - Euripides
I was thinking of something more like mob rule than an institutionalized thing. But whatever floats your boat.
There are far too many people who will do just about anything for money. Hell, under the right circumstances, I would write spamming software, even though the very idea makes me sick. I am a family man. I have a wife and daughter to take care of. My first responsibility is to them. "Social responsibility" doesn't even come close. If I had to choose between buying food and paying rent for my family or being socially responsible - fuck society.
-- Will program for bandwidth
I thought at first I was doing no harm programming video games but apparantly I was wrong. Just like my free pic basic interpreter, it could be used to enable someone to do something realy bad (button/switch decoding potentiometer decoding, real time clock) but it could also be used for good. I have made a life decision not to follow good vs evil ethics, but rather follow the law that is neither good nor evil but just is.
or find drugs which will kill & be hard to find.
if the company doesn't sign the contract and you get layed off.. just post a link on slashdot...they'll beg you to come back to work and fix it after a good slashdotting..:)
Just Limin' Mon
Check this out. There's already a code of conduct for software engineering but I don't think many people already respect it :)
http://www.acm.org/serving/se/code.htm
There are several rules of Software Engineering.
1) There's For Dummy's and in 30 Days books about every language ever written. Because of this, every person with a GED thinks that they can write software better than you, the person with multiple CS degrees/certifications/so forth, because they can program their VCR.
2) The client will not trust you, you are a software engineer. That stack you wrote, they don't understand it. In your documentation, rewrite all of your notes from your Intro to Data Structures course. When the client doesn't understand (after all, they don't have the prereqs), or doesn't bother to read it, they will mistrust you. Again, there will be a problem.
3) Your client will now give you THEIR idea of how the software should be written. Because of all of these tools that SHOULD be useful, they're sure that they have written you a design better than anything that you gave them, because it has circles and arrows. Most of them make little sense. Many of them are dangerously redundant. At any rate, the client will check you to make sure that EVERYTHING that they put on that sheet is in the code, and that nothing else is.
4) Forced by Corporate pressure, you will write this. As a result, your software will not work. Perhaps you should have read "Software Engineering for Dummy's" It all makes sense in there.
This is comical, insightful, sad, and interesting. People that write software now find a conscience. This is something that scientists have faced for many, many years. Welcome to the club. But keep in mind that other professions (medical, legal, etc...) have also addressed this problem.
You are nothing special. Don't think that you are. You are not. Personal ethics has been around for at longer than you have been.
For every Civil Rights lawyer, there is a person chasing after ambulances. For every scientist in opposition to nuclear proliferation, there is another trying to make the perfect bomb. Cure for cancer? Try biochemical warfare. Do these follow some oath? Not really. Why should the software profession be so different? Are you all more ethical than these other groups? Okay, you want to be as ethical as medical doctors. Okay. Yah sure.
Me thinks that you think to highly of yourselves. Slashdot, New for Nerds, Stuff that matters. Legos, Star Wars, anime, the Simpsons, the X-Files, Everquest, Gamecube, and now ethics.Tis harsh, but grow up!
I've grappled with this issue since I was an undergrad many, many years ago. There is no easy answer. I'll be very blunt and hope that this debate continues. Get your butt out of your face, stop sitting on the roses, smell the roses, and learn a bit about humanity. Some of you have, many of you haven't. Many nerds don't care about this or have never personally faced this problem.
This can viewed as flamebait. If trying to make one think is flamebait, then okay. This should not be insightful; it just says that you have been living in a fog. Troll? Actually, this is a troll.
first, kill all macro$ux programmers. then it dont matter.
To debunk the metaphysicist, one needs only to take him outside and throw a rock at his head. If he ducks, he's a liar.
A hypocratic oath for programmers? This bloated self righteousness is flabbergasting.
Dismissed unfairly? What a load of crap! You are hired to write code that your boss wants you to write. If you don't want to write it, don't. If you get fired, go get another frickin' job where you aren't asked to do what you don't want to do. Imagine a guy getting a job painting houses, but he refuses to paint with a roller because it isn't the "right way to do it". Or he refuses to paint a house blue because it "will be harmful to the neighborhood". That painter would be shitcanned in a minute.
Grow Up. Get Over It. You don't have a divine right to work at a company that doesn't want you. Amazing, isn't it?
I'm sure this will be marked as flamebait, but it is the truth.
You people aren't special. You aren't unique. You're about as indispensible as the typical taco bell employee. If you have enough money leftover at the end of the month to buy a snickers bar, you are overpayed.
I realize that most of you are probably still in college...and have yet to experience the "real world" as it is so frequently called. So your view on reality is pretty out of line with, say, everybody over the age of 30. But good grief, you're just programmers. You are pretty much the lowest guy on the totem pole, and you always will be.
Where do these egos come from? Intellectual Incest on slashdot probably.
They went ahead and did it without me, the spam yielded no profit at all, and I'm still working for them, but considering other job offers.
I explained politely as I could how spamming is not a good business practice, and even though I have many years in the software business, I was ignored. It's sad when companies trust their upshot marketing people over the more qualified seasoned employees.
http://www.codewolf.com - Just good stuff to waste time
I've done this several times.
They weren't terrible things, but parts of my company have wanted to do a few things over the years that would be bad for our customers. I've refused to work on them, but always with clearly-presented objections. They've not gone ahead, or have been killed around deployment time.
It actually works better to delay refusal and start with the objections. Those early phases of design will drag out as you work to build consensus on your objection. If you refuse immediately, you lose your involvement, you lose your voice on the matter. Also, you don't want people to start disrespecting and ignoring you for seemingly arbitrary obstructions.
I always start with the explanation of long-term damage to the company, as this is the best way to counter the typical motivation. Someone says that this will increase long-term profits, and you need to point to the way that this is actually an illusion. This approach is valid for the very large fraction of destructive projects that are really trading off long-term success for short-term success.
However, there will be times when the company will actually make greater profits from a questionable practice, or else ignores the arguments in the first bit. This is where the hard personal decisions and possible sacrifice would come in. Yes, if you don't want to work on it, you will have to continue to refuse or else quit. I have not had to escalate to this point. However, if I were to get that far, I expect I would prefer quitting to being fired, and would make it very clear to the other programmers and to senior management why I was leaving.
The keys to any of this working are that you are correct, the management is willing to listen to you, is sensible, and has their own motivation to be reasonable above and beyond the profit motive. If they didn't fit that description, I'd start looking for alternate employment. Finally, I don't find these situations to be a bad sign; only if the company doesn't respond well is the company unhealthy.
It was called the Hacker's Ethic. I took it seriously. As far as I was concerned, it overrode EULAs, intellectual property agreements and even laws. It did that because it made more sense than anything else and its intent was pure and simple and right: Be good and learn all you can.
It got little respect from those who didn't understand and couldn't relate, or who were corrupted by too much money made from a position that opposed its intent. We got things like preposterous and unsubstantiated claims by corporations of millions of dollars "lost" when someone smart poked around in their systems and looked at their source code. We got things like the DMCA.
Granted, it had its problems, perhaps the biggest of which was that which it shares with all other ethics and oaths and rules to live by: It had to be interpreted and applied by people. It wasn't strictly codified. It was too easy for people to twist parts of it around to suit themselves, to justify improper addendums to permit giving in to whatever idiotic temptation they were saddled with.
It seems a little quaint now that I'm in my 40s, but I still live by my interpretation of its basic intent. It still overrides harmful laws like the DMCA in my mind. I still believe that if it's accessable by a modem or an ethernet packet and someone intends no malfeasance and does no malfeasance, that you shouldn't be able to punish them if it's discovered that they looked at all your insecure stuff. I still believe that I have every right to decode all the radio signals passing through my body or entering my house on a cable line in any way I choose.
The sad fact is that people are people, and a Hippocratic Oath for coders would do about as much to make the world a better place as the Hippocratic Oath for doctors has done. We've still got quacks, HMOs, and ambulance chasers, and I fear we'll always be stuck with MCSEs who've been taught that Microsoft Exchange is the only mail server, stupid reverse engineering laws, the BSA, and software patents.
This works. Very few structures fall down in the developed world because of engineering errors.
One way would be to require that programs whose malfunction can cause nontrivial harm be signed and sealed by a registered professional engineer, the way building plans are signed. To give this teeth, certificates for code-signing would be issued only through registered professional engineers.
Someday, programming may grow up and go this route.
I know, I know, digital signatures are posed as the magic-wand solution to every problem...
But if a software ethics organization were to act as a CA, and issue certificates to programmers with which to sign their code (source or binary), along with some descriptive fields declaring what this code does or does not do (uninstall totally, expire after some interval, transmit information without your express consent, install hooks into other applications to gather information, display paid advertisements, use your spare cycles/bandwith, whatever), end-users could see in plain language what the program will do if they use it.
If a program's behavior was inconsistent with its signature, a complaint could be brought by end-users to the overseeing organization, and whoever signed the code would have to answer the complaints or face sanctions (including revoking their code-signing certificate for existing and future use).
If the system became popular enough, users would think twice about using software without a valid signature.
This would put pressure on programmers to think beyond their next paycheck and consider how what they are doing will affect their professional reputation; It's easier to say "I'm not going to do this because it will get my licence suspended" than "I'm not going to do this because I think it's wrong" (no matter how valid the latter may be)
By being linked to individual programmers instead of software companies, it would also create an effective "credits" system for the programming profession, you could point out your past work on a CV, and prove it with the embedded signature.
--
Benjamin Coates
A profession will not blossom overnight, and only important things become professions. There is no janitorial profession, and there is currently no software profession. In fifty years, if humanity still sees this work as important, there might be.
Nowdays, depending on the situation, "professionalism" will be held up as a worthy goal, but its meaning varies from company to company. In fact, unethical managers probably bark something about professionalism before they send ethical coders packing. I don't want that definition (the managers') to be the standard for our profession. So I envision decades of hard, ethical work ahead of all of us, to come up with a better one that we and the public expect of all coders. We live in Hippocratic times.
[teary-eyed]later,
Jess
I am programmed for etiquette, not destruction!
I already know how to code. Learned it from books and those willing to teach me. Lots of people learned it from other books and other teachers. Hard for a uniform ethic to take hold in that environment.
Not saying it wouldn't have been a GOOD THING(tm) but read the subject again.
-CZ
As for what I think of them, since I am a member of ACM and IEEE, I stand by them. This may sound a little idealistic; I believe I am just being realistic and trying to set an example for the rest of industry. And for those that say "good luck getting a job", think about a couple of things: 1) If enough people do it, it will work and 2) I work for the US government. One of the big things is that you have to be responsible with your client's (the military) information, or else you are fired and put on trial for treason. A bit ironic that the US government is leading the way in this area.
On a side note, I think it would be great if we could create an organization that functioned as both a union/lobbying group and one that certified people and held them to a higher standard of ethics and excellence. It might seem like it would be too hard for one group to cover so many goals, but think of the power that group would have if it worked: Want good software that doesn't violate people's rights? Then treat us with respect!
Nathan's blog
You want to be licensed, and take an oath? More power to you. YOU go ahead and pay dues to some "union" so they can screw you over, steal the money, and not give you a pension that you deserve because of some "rule". You go ahead and stick to your principles...
Me on the other hand? Whoever pays me the most, gets my skill set for a while. If I have problems writing the stuff, then I'll find a new job FIRST, and then quit. In the meantime, there will be 'situations' that occur - hard drive crashes, data corruption, etc. Things that will keep people busy figuring it out while I get a new job and STILL draw a paycheck...
But pleassssse don't make me puke with that whole Oath thing... There's always more people like me out there who just don't give a rats ass, and ya know what? We're employable.
I constantly see programmers wanting to be included under the umbrella of engineering.
One of the common threads to all major engineering fields is a code of ethics. When I took the Fundamentals of Engineering test, there was an ethics section that all licenced engineers are required to uphold or they lose their licence and have a tough time ever getting a job again.
If computer science wants to be considered a form of engineering with all the associated perks, they must abide by the code.
For those of you who couldn't care less about being considered an engineer, the field still holds up as a field that requires professionals uphold a code putting the safety and health of the public first. Engineers who uphold the code find no more difficulty find employment than doctors who life up to the Hippocratic Oath.
Some posters express concern about the oath becoming "I will follow the DMCA..." but a reasonable code will assign priorities. Putting the public as a whole first, weather it violates the DMCA or not, would be the natural first point. Of course, following the law would be on the list somewhere as long as it were not superceded by a previous point. (i.e. I must crack encryption to eliminate the spyware would be acceptable, but I will crack the encryption to sell pirated DVDs would not be okay.)
The biggest problem with a code of coding would be the independent and unlicenced nature of the programing community. Engineers and doctors are generally licenced and are college graduates. They have had ethics sections in class. They must be certified by the state, and revoking that licence for ethics violations will kill the career of the violator. With things like the Open Source community, programers are rarely licenced or certified in any way. Even major companies such as Microsoft, iD, or Corel will hire programers without degrees from what I understand. I find it ironic that the OSS community is the group of programers I trust most yet they are the least likely to abide by an organization's code of ethics.
When it finally boils down (I'm a chemical engineer in case the figure of speech didn't tip you off), I'd like to see programers become a more organized group, much like engineers, doctors, and surveyors, but I don't see that as a likely event.
as if this isn't the headquarters and catherdral of the First Inernational Church of Rabid Linux Supporters (other wise knows as the Linux Open Source Encouragement and Racist Supporters) or L.O.S.E.R.S
What a fucking joke - you guys are more intolerant than any church and if it weren't for the fact that most of you are -
A: Too Fat to get out the door
OR
B: Can't move five feet without passing out from Asthma that you all seem born with
OR
C: Don't go anywhere as buses and taxi's arent free and thus you have a philosophical problem with them
You would have long ago flown a plane into the microsoft headquarters - the only reason you haven't declared an open holy war or Jihad on MS is that their marketing and sales guys would eat you alive on the battlefield (you'd be designing strategy sofwtare whilst they were tearing your hearts out - don't believe me ? look what they did to thei competititors).
Just declare the whole fucking thing a religion and get off your high horses.
And you wonder why we normal people think your all hypocrites ?
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
I think a better (and more realistic) alternative to some sort of oath would be to treat software professionals like the engineers they are. In every state (AFAIK), you cannot lawfully claim to be an engineer without a license.
However, the tests that exist in most states are completely inappropriate to software engineering. Dynamics and statics are all very nice, but they have nothing to do with most software systems. What is needed is a test and license for software engineering. Licensed professionals could (assuming an appropriate test) command higher salaries than mere code monkies, and employers would know that they can expect a certain degree of quality from professionals.
This scheme also has the potential to improve the general quality of software. Just like a civil engineer signs and stamps building plans, declaring them sound, a software engineer could be employed to audit a software system's design and implementation, certifying it as secure and robust (to a point). As any experienced developer will tell you, code and design reviews are extremely important, and often neglected.
vi is my shepard, I shall not font.
can someone mod this down or delete it(the preferable soltution) - it was posted by someone else using my PC which had my account logged in - i was to late to stop them hitting submit -this does NOT reflect my views - thank you.
Apologies for any offence this may cause
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
I specialize in writing telemarketing software (predictive dialers, phone number collecting bots, etc.). Should I be considered an moral outcast? Where will this witch hunt end?
If you have any negative comments you'd like to target at me, please include your home phone and the time (Eastern Standard Time, please) at which you normally eat dinner.
OK.. I'm gonna rant now.
Coders.. your not holy men.. your not preachers.. you write code.. you a job like anyone else does a job.. why should you need or take a an oath? thats just plain dumb and silly.. if someone doesn't take this oath would that mean they can't get access to development tools? Would'nt that go against the very spirit of open source and the GNU license and the whole spirit of sharing..
sure most people hate adware and spyware stuff as much as i do(a ton). but fact of the matter is thats the current support(MONEY) system for some "free" software out there.. perhaps if people paid for the software there would'nt be all that crap added on..
Its up to you to use that software or ad laden website.. free choice.. stop whining about extras on free software.. its free for a reason, especially the companies that aren't in it for a "greater good" they're in it for making money.. we live in a capitalist society.. get used to it.
end rant
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3604/lib/WorldCodes/Wo rldCodes.html
That said, a well written poetic work catching the proper spirit, and conducive to memorization is probably worthwhile
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
"And how do we protect such programmers from being dismissed unfairly for standing on principle?"
a tion (or a squirrelly spyware dev house) if you plan to turn down projects because they are "morally offensive". It's up to YOU to exercise your pie-in-the-sky youthful idealism and don't take the friggin' job to begin with.
This topic is asinine, and this question comes frighteningly close to proposing some kind of workplace legislation. (I can't see what else it could refer to.)
Can't anyone see the total, complete hypocrisy in this? Everyone here always screams "keep your laws off my code," when we're talking about the DMCA and other legislation. But when we start talking about stuff that no one likes (spyware, spam programs), there's some kind of moral bandwagon to propose intrusive workplace legislation to "protect programmers from being dismissed".
To solve this problem, people have to stop installing this crap on their computers. Period. There will always be programmers out there who are willing to write this dreck -- and they should be able to, because the bottom line is that programming should be constitutionally protected speech . I thought we were all in agreement on that issue?
If your employer hires you to write spyware, and then you refuse on moral grounds, then you should get fired. It's that simple. The employer should have the right to do that. Don't take a job at Penthouse Magazine if you don't like nudity. Don't get a job working for Howard Stern if you can't handle drunken midgets vomiting in the hallway. And don't take a job at a mega-ultra-multinational-conglomerate-supercorpor
There can be NO good legislative solution to this problem. The idea of some kind of "code of ethics" is fine, but I think the best way to handle it is the creation of a new alliance, an industry standard, some kind of brand or label which identifies companies and products which follow that code of ethics. (I guess kind of like TrustE, except not sucking.)
This is making a large assumption, that the company is actually capable of measuring programmer productivity. I submit that most organizations are not. It's not for lack of trying, but this is still something that we're not good at. I imagine that if companies were good at measuring productivity, they'd be less likely to torture their coders and we'd have less need for unionisation/professionalisation.
later,
Jess
I am programmed for etiquette, not destruction!
I don't know what kind of programmer you're refering to. It took me five years to get my degree in Computer Engineering, plus a lot more time of ongoing education since I graduated in 1990. That was an extra five years after getting my associate degree.
I actually have very little respect for doctors' attitude that 'we save lives'. So do I when I design control systems running heavy machinery, or avionics, or run an industrial plant, or whatever. Like any other profession, medicine is full of people who aren't as capable as others. The problem I see with doctors is that they all want us to believe that they're 'hollier than thou'. I don't accept that. If a doctor fucks up, a patient dies. If an avionics software engineer fucks up, a couple of hundred people die.
If the state of the medical profession, HMOs, drug manufacturers, and other health services in the United States is any indication, I'd much rather be an unlicensed software engineer than an "ethical" doctor. Why is it that medicines and medical attention cost as much as ten times as what they cost in other countries?
As for the cool technologies OSS has today, keep in mind that a great majority of them are re-implementations of software developed privately or under a university grant. Somebody did the research and h4x0rs re-implemented it. I support OSS (and not GPL'd, by the way; other licences like BSD are more to my liking but that's me), so don't go flaming me for this comment. A h4x0r != software engineer, though often a software engineer is also a h4x0r. People forget (even on /.) that coding is only the smallest part of the profession. System design, knowing how to analyze and apply the correct algorithms, understanding the OS (or how to build one), the compilers (or how to build them), and so on are as valuable as coding. I met many h4x0rs, even employed software "professionals" who don't have a clue of how to code something as simple as a Quick Sort.
Last time I checked, there are all kinds of charlatans developing 'miracle cures' and diets and what have you that, in the end, try to pass for members of the health industry. Turn midnight TV on and see for yourself.
Cheers!
Ehttp://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
Do your fuckin job like anybody else is expected to. I'm sick of seein this shit out of you self-righteous "nerds"... you have a boss for a reason do your job or find another one. that goes for everybody not just "coders"- aka the eletist bitches that post to this website...
I agree with your point, but this particular bit doesn't quite ring true to me:
Certification make sense in a very limited set of professions where the practictioner will be doing something life-critical like cutting you open, or defending your freedom in court, or designing a bridge for you...with a very few exceptions, programming and sysadmin are not like this
How much software can we really afford to have fail? How many people that don't really know what they're doing can we handle. The Therac-25 incidents don't make me feel any happier -- programmers hack out something and then end users get the product and simply rely on it not to fail. In a lot of cases, this trust is not warranted.
May we never see th
I refuse to write code that will harm others. I refuse to write code that will discourage other developers. I refuse to hurt those in my industry who are attempting to improve the computing experience of those less experienced than they.
I refuse to dishonor my profession.
http://www.globalideasbank.org/BOV/BV-381.HTML
Hippocratic oath for Scientists, Engineers, and Executives
I vow to practise my profession with conscience and dignity;
I will strive to apply my skills only with the utmost respect for the well-being of all humanity, the earth, and all its species.
I will not permit considerations of nationality, politics, prejudice, or material advancement to intervene between my work and the duty to future generations;
I make this Oath solemnly, freely, and upon my honour
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If programmers had to refuse to write software that did no good for users, surely all of Microsoft's programmers would be out of a job?
mogorific carpentry experiments
this seems to be a question thats has little to do with programming. typically one would hold that you should not use other people's authority (your employer) as an excuse to violate or exploit other people liberties (privacy).
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
Parent:
"Public interest" is sprinkled through just about all the points. How can anyone possibly base a code of ethics on something that can't possibly be defined?
Apparently, you missed the following in grandparent:
Without the aspirations, the details can become legalistic and tedious; without the details, the aspirations can become high sounding but empty; together, the aspirations and the details form a cohesive code.
Grandparent left out the details because they don't fit into the 4,096 character limit before Slashdot cuts out the rest with "Read the rest of this comment..."
Will I retire or break 10K?
By its very nature an code of ethics means that you as an employee MAY have issues with what your employer wants you to do.
5 22 2&mode=thread&tid=98
Given the recent market
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/05/06/122
I dont think its in a coders best interest at the moment to be telling the employer what he wants to do.
The hippocratic oath has not prevented doctors from doing harm (e.g. Mengele). Why should it stop coders from doing harm either?
"There is a terrorist behind every bush"
Most large (and many not-so-large) software projects are routinely handled by cutting them into little pieces, that can be made by anyone without the full view of the project. This means that anyone trying to bypass this "measure" would simply have to cut the project to pieces and assign the pieces to non-suspecting programmers. Then they'd put it back together, and the latest spyware, spam-mailer or whatever would be ready to roll.
This is where it reminds me of that Monty Python piece about the killing joke - it was so deadly that it was distributed among many during its development, and most just had one word to work with :-O. Some poor bastard saw two words, and almost died from it :-)
Black holes are where God divided by zero
The first time I encountered this was while developing a website and other applications for a company, we were asked to also provide ways to promote themselves online and find new customers. The sales manager of the company thought the best way to do it was (loosely targetted) spam to newsgroups and email.
I explained to them that not only do I find the idea of spamming people personally offensive, but that it would also harm their company's reputation. It's probably also important to mention that they were trying to market a technology, which despite excellent, scientifically repeatable, was still in its infancy and many in the industry were yet to fully trust. I explained that actions like mass spamming were likely to do more than just irritate people who didn't want their messages, but could quite likely leave the impression that they were fly by nighters who would be take their money and disappear leaving them holding worthless equipment. At best it would make them look unprofessional.
The sales manager insisted that just putting a few ads in magazines and online and being on search engines were not enough. He told me that at his previous business how he had purchased lists of emails submitted to websites and what great success he had with it. My response was to try to explain that not only was his target audience different (probably a mistake since most people don't like being told how to do their jobs, but he was comparing selling $100 items to clueless users to selling million dollar equipment to experienced engineers) but as spam was becoming more prevalent people would be paying less attention to it (He admitted he had left the previous place in 96).
He was unconvinced and demanded that I help him develop his databases and operate these services for him. I offered to continue developing the website and other applications but refused to assist him with any spamming or other objectional activities (there were quite a few other ideas he had but they were so hare-brained I didn't pay enough attention to them to be able to remember them now). They said I could do it or resign, so I resigned.
About June last year I found out that they company had folded and most the directors were trying to either sue each other or make complaints to authorities to try and get the others arrested. I found that most of the people who don't see a problem with spamming or spyware aren't very nice people to work for.
Codes of ethics are interesting phenomena. If there are none applicable, one would seem to get anarchy as a result. But if one has too much of a code, one gets legalism (i.e., the breach of the spirit of law while existing within the letter of said law). Either extreme can be hazardous.
Funny thing is, we appear already to have a partial code, as suggested/documented by ESR in The Cathedral and the Bazaar. In short, plagiarism is bad and harmful (thus we have mores about forking and proper maintainance of history files). Knowledge has inherent value, so it should be shared. Remember also that, in general, we hold warez d00dz, script kiddies, and malicious crackers, etc, in derision. That adverse value judgement implies the existence of a Code. The question is, do we flesh it out? How? How compulsory should it be? My answers, for what they're worth, follow.
In reverse order: No, the Code should not be compulsory. Consistent with freedom of belief, no one should be compelled to take the Oath. Further, it would end up either ancillary or ineffective. To my mind, any Code adopted is an expression of the values held by the one taking the Oath. In a sense, it's almost beside the point. The Oathtaker would abide by his Oath anyway. Binding himself to a certain way of doing business is just a formalization of his already existing approach to his profession. Conversely, an Oath taken insincerely probably won't last, unless one should develop more scruples or backbone after the Oathtaking. An Oath taken that way would be ineffective.
Should we flesh out the Code? Yes and no. Some have pointed out that Codes already exist. To the extent that they apply to us, we needn't spend effort re-hashing them. To the extent that they don't cover our various situations, they should be fleshed out to do so. Inherent in that statement is the idea that we as (assumedly adult or mature) professionals have varying personal codes which should be mirrored.
On a side note, what we may need is not to be compelled to a Code but to be clear on the Code. My citation of the hacker ethic as described by ESR is admittedly incomplete. We as a community should know how we as a community do business, and why. Why is OSD usually superior and preferrable? Where is the line found between property and proprietary? Et cetera.
In the end, though, Codes are roadmaps, not cure-alls. Some of us will act on unspoken, perhaps even unwritten or unconscious codes of conduct. Some of us will not. Each should have the freedom to choose and not be penalized for said choice. So, I conclude that a clear, known Code would be a good thing to have around, but not to have enforced on all and sundry.
G. M. Manath
Go not to the Elves for counsel, for they will say both 'Yes' and 'No.'
You get job security, something that doesn't exist anymore. If I wanted to find a company that I could work for 30 years at, I couldn't do it. The Internet makes it easy to search the world for better higher paying jobs, when it used to only be in the local newspaper.
I wouldn't mind knowing that my job isn't going to get cut just because there is a 2 month gap inbetween projects. That's all. It's a case where we were 2 weeks ahead of schedule, and they had given us 1.5 months extra time just in case. I think I might take a week off and go stand in line for Star Wars, yeah right...
Is it somebody's (you, me, society, God) say-so, which determines what's harming and what's not? Or is this ethical question something that's intuitively known or hard-wired into genes?
I find it somewhat controversial to leave this decicion to a individual programmer. Not just because he/she may not be able to make correct judgement in every case (we're not infallible) - many of us are not interested in ethical questions, yet this kind of suggestion forces each and every programmer to consider ethical issues. I find it extremely disturbing when a programmer is not interested in ethical matters, though I find it even more disturbing when someone is forced to consider those same issues even if he/she is not willing to do so (free choice allows one to opt out, at least as long as it doesn't directly hurt anyone, but this is an utilitarian point of view).
So. How is harm determined?
Life sucks and then you die.
I doubt if this would be effective in the long term. Look what it failed to do for the medical profession! tim
You really can't compare what programmers do to what doctors do.
Doctors have an immediate effect on the patient. Their actions have direct consequences.
Programmers create tools, the users of which decide what to do with them. Any kind of restrictions on what these tools can do are stupid, because there are a lot of things that can be used for good as well as evil.
Consider what medical equipment could be used for by unethical doctors vs. what it is used for by ethical ones.
Coders are human, and therefore assholes. I do not share this pessimistic view of mankind. But i d share the idea that program's are concepts/ideas. They are in a form that is very well reproducable.
If someone want's to kill 1000's of people in a game, he can create such a game.
If someone has an idea how to communicate with 1000's of real people he will do it. Even if he/she only want to tell how to get a bigger penis.
If someone want too proof he a a c001 d0d3 and he can Hax0R your Box he will.
If you want to sell stable believable software you will dress in gray and make software that work.
If all these people come together they will not agree. So neither will their programs.
No one should hire this this bastard! Since he is a programmer and obviously out to make money as he says he'll of course create programs that he'll need to be called back for later to fix! he'll pull you into his net with constant updates and every fix imaginable you'll require!!
:)
hehe well.. i find it funny
shouldn't everybody be able to draw their own line as to what they personally feel is ethical or not? isn't this what free will is all about? shouldn't we all be taking responsbility for our own actions?
several years ago, when the company i was working for told us that they were considering performing work for a local defence contractor, i expressed the fact (via email to everbody in the 20 odd staff company) that i would not work on any defence related projects. three others also voiced this opinion. when the first round of redundancies came, guess who the first four out the door were?
i am not complaining, this was the price i paid for sticking to my convictions, and i am happy that i did it. i do not hold any grudges against my former employers for their actions.
my personal line is different from other people's. at the time, we were developing software for undersea telecommunications systems, as one of our colleagues pointed out, this could potentially have been used for military purposes, but this was within my ethical boundaries and i was happy to develop the software.
i was offered work for a company developing military submarines, this was not within what i considered ethically acceptable to myself.
the point is, what i consider acceptable is my choice, and my choice alone.
i ride a motorcycle, i personally accept the danger/risk associated with this activity. i wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle, because i don't accept the risk of riding a motorcycle without one. but i do not frown either upon those who do not personally accept the risk to personal safety that riding a motorcycle entails, nor upon those who feel that the enjoyment of riding a motorcycle without a helmet is worth the risk of either endangerment to physical wellbeing or risk of prosectution.
i personally do not want to be trapped within somebody elses definition of what is morally/ethically acceptable. we already have enough legislation and social dogma fencing in our ability to choose for ourselves.
however i do endorse discusssions like this which make people think about the consequences of their actions.
Neither cover all important points and both have problems, but they are a good start. In particular neither are very clear when two requirements contradict. For example from the BCS Code of Conduct:
3. You shall have regard to the legitimate rights of third parties.
may contradict
4. You shall ensure that within your professional field/s you have knowledge and understanding of relevant legislation, regulations and standards, and that you comply with such requirements.
In some cases where DMCA or EUCD apply.
Despite these problems, the various documents are certainly worth a look:
Steven Murdoch.
web: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/sjm217/
I've read a lot of the posts here and the main idea is that this Oath is "Youthful Idealism". The concept of Open Source is also "Youthful Idealism", yet it came to be. I'm not saying this will take off as open source did, but to say the concept of open source is an OK concept and a standard of excellence and virtue is not OK makes no sense. The implementation of the GPL (and variants) proves idealistic concepts can materialize if you have numbers and the best/brightest behind it.
This is just my $0.02. Who knows... some day I will have a nickel.
Sidenote: I am not for nor against an Oath.
This is the Internet. You can say "fuck" here. - AC
Ok, here's my serious point: A coder, as every engineer / developer / inventor / insert-likewise-profession-here can not foresee the consequences of his work. There may be numerous GPLed database applications misused for the purpose of serving child pr0n. Are the DBMSs bad? No, it's their usage that aches our morale.
IBM never foresaw the rise of PCs, the telefax was sold out from its original inventors (they believed the market was too small), and the inventors of the internet certainly didn't think of sth. like /.
In most cases you cannot foresee the consequence of your work, good nor bad. However, systems that do bad things need an admin, too...so isn't this more a question of "hacker ethics" that "coder ethics"?
Btw. I would not want to code for a system designed for military purposes. They tend to be really annoyed by bugs ;)
No. Thanks for asking.
I have artritis in my joints. Killing me now, while I am in my 30's, could save me years, perhaps even decades of pain. Doing me that favor is not up to you, or any doctor. If I really can't stand living, it's up to me to kill myself.
My current "living will" says simply this: "Never pull the plug. Use any and all extreme means to keep me alive, no matter how severe my suffering. I can take it. I fully intend to stay hooked up to radical life support systems until either I die anyway, or future scientists invent a new robot body I can live in, even if it takes hundreds of years. If anybody pulls the plug on me, I request that my surviving friends and relatives avenge my death with immediate and violent action. Thank you in advance for respecting my wishes."
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
No, I'm not going to do PHP on that porn site I was working on earlier because damnit, I think the women who are being paid money for it don't know what they're doing to themselves.
If I take a stand against The MAN, and do it for the sake of the women, perhaps I can be the voice that changes the opinions of a generation of men. I can help those women get REAL hard-working jobs, like at the McDonald's across the street.
I'm going to do it, because I care for all of you. Because in my heart, you are all my brothers, and sisters, and I know that if I do my part to be good to society, eventually it will be good in return to me.
Ooops, where was I? Oh yes...
$sql = "select * from PictureTable where Catagory1 = \"Double-D\" AND Catagory2 = \"sex\""
$query = mysql_query($sql);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($query))
{ echo "<img src = \"".$row[1]."\">
";}
Eh, nevermind what I said before... Screw you guys... :)
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
I don't think their should be an oath, but we should find out who the scabs are that are coding for these evil corporations - ie the RIAA, MPAA and anyone else who writes spywear or drm systems. Then we should either expose them for the asshole scabs that they are and banish them from the geek community, or kidnap them and force them to reveal all their backdoors, or just bribe them, or higher prostitutes to give them sexual favours until they agree to change jobs.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It is to say the society/subculture/union is aspirational, it is not just directly for the groups own good, there are ethics which make the groups presence felt, that having the grouping is of use. Its a vision/mission statement thing. Money is not everything, [but no money is nothing].
Margret Thatcher said there is no such thing as society. She was wrong.
Be Free: Free Software Tuition
As someone who sees this everyday, let me tell you something. Do you know what cancer pain is? I am surprised that you even talk about your arthritis pain. (btw arthritis at age 30 IS abnormal) Your "living will" to be supported for ever is based on not knowing what it is to be supported. Ask someone who has gone through that and you will understand
Desi Noise, Live!
Maybe not quite the same thing, but it mentiona a couple of the same issues and seems appropriate, to me at least.
http://tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/cpsr-speech.html
In summary, I'd say the safety of such devices today has more to do with market economics, i.e., if a bug causes 1k deaths no one will buy us and we'll go out of business, and the procedures established by the FDA and so on. The tort system is too arbitrary and random to have any meaningful effect; in fact, it does a tremendous amount of harm to the industry: look up silicon implants sometime or Dow chemical.
Ya, sounds like a great idea... Then you can all sign it.. and I'll get paid WAY more to code for the Dark Side!
Heheheh
-=-Ze End-=-
In no time flat, there won't be any Trolls, there won't be any "bad" posters mucking things up, and we can play in the fields of Malda (a.k.a. Slashdot) in our underwear while listening to heavy metal (but not Metallica, because they'll all have been executed).
Seriously, nice diversion from the real issue with the spectre of eeeevil government. Government regulation is exactly what's needed here--and is what happens when one mere individual posts spyware--it's labeled a trojan, and he goes to jail if caught. All I want is parity for our corporate masters.
But in the Bush-Enron republic, how likely is that?
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
The original Oath worked because oaths were taken seriously in ancient times; an oathbreaker would be ostracized by the community, and may suffer great financial harm, as no one would be willing to deal with him. In modern times, however, the global community is so large that it does not care about individual members. You can break any oath any time you want, and no one would notice.
That is why most of our important oaths, such as "I shall not kill", or "I shall not disclose the secrets I gained while working at XYZ", are backed up by laws and enforcment agencies, set up specifically for that purpose. It would of course be possible to set up another such agency, but I contend that it would quickly be hijacked by corporate interests, and rendered useless or malicious. Similar things are happening now to the original Hippocratic Oath, actually.
The bottom line is, if the majority of people prefer to do harm in exchange for some generous compensation, that's what they'll do. No number of empty promises is going to stop them.
>|<*:=
My first job out of college was writing code (in QBASIC, no lie) for a pawn shop management package. I realized early on that I was writing code to help the shady take advantage of the disadvantages and stupid, but I could live with that. It was when I started learning the laws governing the pawn shop industry, and started writing/changing code so as to prevent our shadier customers from breaking those laws, that I started having ethical dilemmas. I was told on more than one occasion by my boss, the owner, that we were going to do whatever the customer wanted, and not do anything that wouldn't let the customer do what they wanted.
Considering myself a Christian, and trying to be a good one, I had to bail out in favor of keeping a clean soul and conscience. Sticking around and fighting wasn't really an option because (a) it was my first job, and I didn't want to get fired and earn a label, and (b) the boss was a megalomaniacal little punk who wouldn't agree it was day time if he could see the sun.
A Hippocratic Oath for Coders isn't a bad idea. I can see many programs out there that could use it, Kazaa, for instance.
However, if coders are to follow an oath stating they won't write harmful code, then it becomes necessary for them to know what is and isn't harmful. This puts too much burden on the coder. Even if it becomes an unofficial rule, I can imagine a coder accidentally writing harmful code and being held accountable not only for the harm but also for breaking the oath.
Just a thought.
No hippocratic oath for coders.
We don't need any more federally mandated crap. However, it might be nice to push for certain things like this to be incorporated as part of your own company policy or coding standards. And - if everyone wanted to they could create a website and post guidelines they have discovered.
However, there need be no "industry standard" or yet another basis for litigation in the software industry. We're already quite bogged down enough with free speech issues.
Come on guys. I bet only 1 in 10 MDs know the Hippocratic Oath. What good would it do for coders?
I prefer trust that comes from peer review.
"Software Engineer" is a bad term. They are not engineeers. They do not offer engineering services as defined under the law. Every state has licensing for professional engineers, and define engineering services (not that you need a PE to practice these engineering services as an employee, but they are defined there). Now a given coder might be multi-talented and can also provide these services in another field, but that's beside the point - it's impossible to get a PE in "Software Engineering," it simply does not exist. "Software Engineers" should stop trying to put themselves with the likes of "Sanitation Engineers" and either get legislation passed to include them as official licensed engineers or stand on their own profession's two feet. BTW, there is a code of ethics for professional engineers - maybe you should look at that and use it as a basis for what you want.
I'm not surprised that your company took the dive. Coding shops are either not hiring and letting attrition do the dirty work, firing a few select to thin the herd, or are closing shop. Now is NOT a good time to be in a business that only serves other businesses, as these businesses are always the first to get hit by any economic bump and the last to recover.
As an aside, only a coding shop would take someone who has done NOTHING but coding. I'm not saying that this is you(although it seems the case, given your point of pride regarding "programming since I was 7") but frankly, if you can't help business get done, you are done in the business world. Yeah, harsh. But real.
i hate spyware and spam as much as anyone else, but both "principles" they violate are not commonly agreed on by the tech community. 1)privacy. it's easy to say on an abstract level that we should have absolute privacy. however, in practice we probably DON'T want everyone to be totally anonymous. just imagine a message board where everyone is anonymous, and where you have no means of tracking down/banning troublemakers. on a more serious note, tracking down criminals. privacy has to be balanced with accountability. also, think convenience- if a site keeps track of my preferences in order to serve me better, i am perfectly fine with that! i think we see here that privacy is not an all-or-nothing concept but a gradual scale on which i'm sure everyone has a different position. 2)freeloading. the tecnical problem with spam is that spammers use resources that don't belong to them - bandwidth is paid for others, who haven't even asked for this. i think if we're honest with ourselves, we have to admit that the tech community loves freeloading when they're the ones doing it. anyone ever say "information wants to be free"? anyone ever download mp3s? are we honestly claiming that the rights of bandwidth providers, of mail servers, are more valuable than record companies? or how about warez? the bnetd discussion here shows which side of most people here fall on that. this is called "pragmatic ethics" - whatever's good for us is ethically okay. when we by our actions that property rights and copyright law don't matter to us, does the so-called "Hippocratic Oath for Coders" amount to "don't write code that is annoying and irritating to users?"
Yup. The poster you are replying to needs to read After The Gold Rush to get an idea of what is needed, and why. I'm all for limited gov't myself, but sometimes a tiny bit of regulation is a good thing. Not all engineers do life-threatening things, and they need to be certified. Why is software any different.
I for one am tired of having my resume being compared side-by-side with "self-made" programmers (or worse, johnny-come-latelys) who have very little or spotty experience, but who will probably work for less. Sometimes these people can pull their weight, but nine times out of ten, I end up being dragged down by them if I have to work side-by-side with them. They give ridiculous timelines, drastically underestimate the complexity of some problems, hardcode things that should not be hardcoded, etc., etc.
It's like hiring a recent high school grad to do EE or Chem E and saying "well, ANYONE can learn this...it's easy". Software development is NOT EASY to do efficiently, correctly, with realistic estimates, etc...certification of some kind is not a magic bullet, but it should raise the bar to admission and help keep the bozo quotient down. The internet boom was a mixed blessing - made for plenty of jobs for anyone, including good people. The downside was that so many bad people were in the mix, and I had to work with scores of them, it seems - many with the attitude, "well, I don't need a degree, don't you feel dumb for getting a Comp Sci degree?" The answer is, and still is, no. You see, I still have a job, at least for now, after a two-month hiatus. These folks have to back to burger-flipping or whatever. Or go back to school or go to school for the first time.
The unfortunate thing is that I have to work at an interview or other correspondence to convince PHBs and recruiters and HR folks that what I have matters to them - I've already proven myself in a way, but it's not recognized but by a few elite right now, and it can be very frustrating. The problem is that this isn't just a problem for me; it is damaging to the industry over the long haul.
Perhaps what is needed is a public awareness campaign?
You do realize, of course, that 99% of america is technically inept, while we may seem like a proud majority here on slashdot, it's because we are. Here. IRL, most people dont' know the first thing about computers. I recently heard a story about a person working in a hospital and she wanted to make a browser window fit all the text she wanted to view. My buddy, the tech support guy, said "Oh, you just click the maximize button," to which she picked up the mouse, and while examining it from all angles, replied "Which one is the maximize button?"
That's the kind of person spyware prays on. That's the kind of person who's Yahoo account gets 10,000+ spam mails a day, and who has no idea how to disable popups or even that some browsers have a control for that (Hell, some people don't even know there are other browsers besides Netscape and Microsoft). How many college kids and AOL users still run Kazaa? Almost every one I know. How many people still post their "profile" on online services even though they can be scanned for spam purposes as easily as writing a perl script? Just about all of them.
Fight ignorance with intellegence, let's let these people know and the system will clean up the trash who code such things. We don't need an Oath, which would probably end up being like this:
IF this is done right, such as a grass roots campaign to educate the pubic as well as keep programmers in line, it not only could work, it would work. But if left up to those who profit from the explotation of the weak, it will never amount to anything but more control for them. After all, that's their job.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
ok, i suck. i forgot to preview and posted it as html. here it is in readable form.
i hate spyware and spam as much as anyone else, but both "principles" they violate are not commonly agreed on by the tech community.
1)privacy. it's easy to say on an abstract level that we should have absolute privacy. however, in practice we probably DON'T want everyone to be totally anonymous. just imagine a message board where everyone is anonymous, and where you have no means of tracking down/banning troublemakers. on a more serious note, tracking down criminals. privacy has to be balanced with accountability.
also, think convenience- if a site keeps track of my preferences in order to serve me better, i am perfectly fine with that!
i think we see here that privacy is not an all-or-nothing concept but a gradual scale on which i'm sure everyone has a different position.
2)freeloading. the tecnical problem with spam is that spammers use resources that don't belong to them - bandwidth is paid for others, who haven't even asked for this. i think if we're honest with ourselves, we have to admit that the tech community loves freeloading when they're the ones doing it. anyone ever say "information wants to be free"? anyone ever download mp3s? are we honestly claiming that the rights of bandwidth providers, of mail servers, are more valuable than record companies? or how about warez? the bnetd discussion here shows which side of most people here fall on that. this is called "pragmatic ethics" - whatever's good for us is ethically okay.
when we by our actions that property rights and copyright law don't matter to us, does the so-called "Hippocratic Oath for Coders" amount to "don't write code that is annoying and irritating to users?"
What was he running, Abacus XP?
If a thing is truly wrong, sometimes you have to stand up to the idiots.
Some years ago, the company i work for sold off part of its operation, and moved the rest to a new state. Company B took over, and bought most of the equipment, the building, and hired most of the laid off people.
I had written a personnel database to manage the schedules of these 3-400 people. Company B wanted it.
Our management, in its infinite wisdom, thought this was a Good Thing. Make a little money for something we don't need anymore. So the CIO calls me and says "Send it to them."
"Ok..let me remove all the personal information, and I'll send them the bare program."
"Nope...they want the whole thing. Names, addresses, everything as it sits right now."
"WHAT? You can't do that! What about all the people who don't work for them now? Should their personal info be in the posession of some company they never heard of? Nope...I won't do it."
"Yes...send it to them today."
"I'll do it on one condition. A signed letter from the CEO, head of personnel, and a release letter from each and every person in the file."
Some of these people had not worked for us for years.
A flurry of emails ensued, with me in the lone dissenting position.
The personnel chief finally saw the light, and realized that you cannot be so cavalier with people's personal information.
I sent them the bare program the next day.
Just because a thing can be done, does not necessarily mean it should be done. If it is truly wrong (gator, Bonzi, Brilliant) then stand up to the PHB's. If they really force the issue....well, you have to do what is right for you.
If you write software to launch Nuclear arms, is that considered harm? If you write it for your country (USA) is it a good thing (for defense)? If you write it for some other country (for its defense), is it considered harm to the USA?
I understand that if you write a virus, you're intentionally causing harm to someone else's computer, but what if you were hired by your government to do so?
You could be hired by your government to pick up a rifle and shoot someone in the head during a war.
The "good guys" commit all kinds of harmful acts in the name of "good". The 911 attacks were terrible, but how much worse was the bombing of Hiroshima? The winner always gets to say whether an act was good or bad. We can rationalize all we want, but humans are terribly biased and have a history of causing harm for so-called "just causes". I don't think we're (as a race) intelligent enough to judge.
That's actually asking, not telling.
And to answer your question, no. I do not have cancer, but I have endured prostate inflamation (which is pain enough to render a person senseless, or in my father's case, unconsious). I've also had other medical issues, but I'm not going to catalog them here. Suffice it to say, I have experinced prolonged and severe pain a few times in my life.
The main points of my post are:
1. As long as I am physically capable of committing suicide, the duty of killing myself is mine and mine alone. If I need a doctor to do it for me, that's a pretty good indicator that I don't really want to die enough to overcome the survival instinct.
2. I won't tell you what to put in your living will if you don't tell me what to put in mine. If I am suffering chronic pain, even if the chance of my suffering ever ending in anything other than death is a million to one, I prefer to commit to staying alive and take that chance.
btw arthritis at age 30 IS abnormal
Don't I know it... but I said I was "in my 30's", not 30. My mother started with the arthritic pain at about the same age, so I have a family history for it. No biggie, it's just a little ache.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
e.g.
d
http://www.bcs.org.uk/
Then you need professional ethics...
e.g.
http://www1.bcs.org/docs/01100/1193/Coc.htm
an
http://www1.bcs.org/docs/01100/1194/Cop.htm
Deleted
If you have ever been a member of the IEEE Computer Society (computer.org) you might see that the software engineering code of ethics is maybe sort of along the lines of what you want.
Why isn't that what we want? Why don't we want a core set of skills that everyone has to demonstrate competency in to get certified?
That one is a little different than the 1948 Geneva version I have seen.
I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity;
I will give to my teachers the respect and gratitude which is their due;
I will practice my profession with conscience and dignity; the health of my patient will be my first consideration;
I will maintain by all the means in my power, the honor and the noble traditions of the medical profession; my colleagues will be my brothers;
I will not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics or social standing to intervene between my duty and my patient;
I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception, even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity;
I make these promises solemnly, freely and upon my honor.
Yeah. If we had something like that, then we would cut down on the number of unskilled programmers out there. Then we would have less security problems and less software failures. That would be a disaster.
Just like not everyone is qualified to design a bridge, and therefore not allowed to, not everyone is qualified to be a programmer, no matter how hard they try or no matter how many "Learn C in 60 days" books they read. If you're programming something like Word, then it probably doesn't matter that much. But operating systems (which have a habit of finding their way into mission critical systems) and custom large system programming (such as shuttle software, medical software, banking software, etc) should not be coded by fresh-out-of-school kids with no experience, or retrained truck drivers with 6 months of book reading behind them (no offense to truck drivers).
Truthfully, I don't know that certification or "oaths" are necesssarily the answer, but the market is apparently not doing it's job here, because it's extremely profitable to build shoddy software.
Moderation Totals: Troll=1, Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Total=4.
you'd think after X amount of people thought it was funny, insightful or interesting.. troll rating would'nt count... just silly....
Doctors don't swear to it anymore due to it being slightly stupid - here it is.
Consider this. There is no Hippocratic Oath sort of thing for physicists, and yet physics has brought us the bomb. It really takes individual people reasoning about the consequences of their actions to affect change.
Very effective of course, since all you do with the current boxes around here is that you look out for them and slow down just in front and speed up afterwards.
The problem is that you can obviously use this to control the movements of a lot of people, so the availability of these data are rather frightening.
Well, my friend was ask if his company could develop this system.
They said "yes, it is possible, but we find it highly unethical so we're not going to do it".
Well, we all know this isn't hard, and while it has been brought up several times since then, it has not yet been implemented, at least not here.
That's an example where a code of ethics at least delayed a morally dubious system from being implemented at least ten years.
Also, recall that it may have been ethical considerations within a group of German scientists that prevented Germany from acquiring The Bomb in WWII. That's speculation, but it is possible.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
maybe i'm just a wobblie idealist, but i think that if we could get at least a good number of programmers under union situations, then we could force our employers to let us keep our computer-moral codes:) we just can't be pushovers about it....
In India after the Bhopal disaster, were new enforced laws brought into existence that would prevent a repeat? No. That BP/Amoco gas pipe that everyone in Nigeria was told NOT TO GO NEAR. What happened? Boom and lots of people died. Quoting,
Did I miss something, or have the scenes from Mad Max with the fuel shortages become reality? To give a more measurable indication of this, third world driving is world famous, neither the right nor the left side is reserved for cars driving in a particular direction. Instead vehicles are just grateful that a road exists at all and drive in a haphazard way. If you watch Lonely Planet on the Discovery Travel & Leisure channel you will see that head-on collisions occur far more than any other in all countries except developed ones. Here are some statistics (scroll down to automobiles). From this same source, I quote,
There is a basic lack of awareness and a fundamental difference in culture. Many Americans look upon the Chinese eating dogs and horses as disgusting and thus nobody on this planet can approach this subject with a truly open mind, except God. Is it so difficult to believe that Indian programmers can have different primal objectives than American coders? After all American cars are (or at least were) constructed for luxury, Japanese cars have a fundamental shift in construction methodologies and objectives towards reliability and modular construction.Like in the US, if you picked up a dog and ripped his heart out in the mall everyone would be like "Oh my God!" but if you do it in a market in China/India it's, well, it's like pointing out that the sky is blue. This lack of respect for animal life and human life (road crash statistics) is indicative of the peoples' thinking. Anyone says, "but eberybody is different" is wrong to some degree. There's always some level of conformity. Even a staunch anarchist in the US can drive, he doesn't "disobey" red lights all the time and "ignore" stop signs all the time. A true anarchist would sit at the roadside and throw roadkill at passing vehicles, would piss in the middle of the freeway stopping all the cars, would attack a drive-thru bank with a sledgehammer, would walk in the street with a long knife in his hand, would throw a lit cigarrete on the floor at the gas station so he doesn't have to pay for his gas, etc.
I could fill this post with my personal experiences whilst visiting India e.g. electrician "If it catchs fire, then I give you half your money back and I fix it". Suffice it to say that look at my website to see the conditions your Indian software is written under. Notice the walls inside the houses - no wallpaper, shredded paint. But that's normal and natural, npbody notices it, it doesn't occur to them, just as making dangerous shortcuts whilst designing & coding don't occur to them. Same as that lost puppy look that you get when you tell a newbie that his PC has been fried because he opened an email with an attachment. He then says "What's an attachment" the thought never occurs, same as nobody *demands* to look at a company's balance sheet in the middle of a job interview. Read this to find out what these countries are actually like. No marketing trash. News like this happens all the time. I mean skyscrapers collapse by themselves all the time - they don't need Osama binLaden.
A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
I'm thinkin' that if someone asks me to develop spyware or viruses or Windows software or something, I indeed reserve the right to say no. Does it mean my job? Maybe in some cases it does. Nobody said ethics was easy.
There are a multitude of reasons why something like this won't work. There are cases where it has been proven that whores in the field will survive over the ethical.
A much older relative of mine *was* a real estate appraiser. What they are supposed to do is determine the value of a piece of property, given a number of criteria, including the local economics and real estate market, the highest and best use of the land, and many other things, depending on the appraisal technique employed and the purpose of the appraisal. You hire an appraiser to tell you the value, and he does.
However, appraisers make their money from banks, who hire them to either justify or not justify a loan for a given transaction. Basically, this means the bank says 'justify this number', and if the appraiser doesn't do that out of ethics, fine. But he won't get any more work from the bank in question.
This has caused appraisers to either become whores for the banks, or go out of business and find another way to make a living. A vast majority have gone out of business.
Another reason this doesn't really work is that there's no similar oath for the user of software. If I develop an application that does something useful for my internal department, open source it, and someone downloads it and does something evil with it, should I, the programmer, be responsible? This is akin to blaming Ozzy Osbourne for suicides and video games for Columbine. It doesn't work.
This type of 'oath' would be the end of hundreds if not thousands of programs, or their creators.
Problem is, where do you draw the line that determinies if your code is harming anyone. If you build a system for Nike that allows them to better monitor employee labor hours, most would think they're doing Nike a service. But what about the disservice to the workers that now feel watched or over-monitored? What about when you find out that the workers are 14 year old girls in foreign labour camps?
Instead of taking an official oath, which is just talk, I encourage everyone to make a conscious personal decision and stick to it, for better or for worse.
Celebrate the sun!
And why do we feel this way?
Frankly, it's because "we" are stupid. "We" are stuck in slave morality, in the camel phase of development (as Nietzsche put it). This kind of "I have to do this because my family is my first priority" is not an effective way to acquire lots of money. It is, however, an effective way to become a wage slave at the mercy of one's employer.
If the state of the medical profession, HMOs, drug manufacturers, and other health services in the United States is any indication, I'd much rather be an unlicensed software engineer than an "ethical" doctor. Why is it that medicines and medical attention cost as much as ten times as what they cost in other countries?
Lawyers. Lawsuits. Need I say more.
Nice Marmot
In India and other countries traffic rules in general don't exist, or are placed in the same cateory as the "don't download mp3s" or pr0n rule. The children learn this, together with the more subtle "primal objectives" values of "get the job done no matter what, use string to tie the engine to the aircraft if you have to, just get it flying, worry about the consequences later". After all if your next meal isn't guaranteed, that's a pretty strong disincentive from thinking too far ahead. A bit like working while someone has a gun to your head - you're gonna cut corners.
Only a well-travelled man can have the insight to say what you've said <<Parent>>
True, although American managers and MBAs try to force software people to override these instincts of making software robust. Same as the architects of WTC overrided Empire-State building robust construction methodologies in favour of cheaper, more profit-maximising WTC central-core-outer-shell construction methodologies.If you're talking about the best of the best, this is true. Of course both America and India are full of IT people that don't know their Redhat from their Windows. The elite-class coders brought up in India do inherently cut more corners than their American counterparts. And American managers force them to cut corners more aggressively (as they are taught to speed up American programmers, Indian programmers on the other hand need slowing down).A caveman dreams of being us, the incalculable power and riches. We dream of being Q, then what?
There is a reason that a hippocratic oath style code of ethics won't work for coders - there is no regulatory body for coders.
The success of a professional code of ethics is dependent on a web of relationships: a regulatory/advocacy body puts pressure on the government to pass laws to require that certain jobs be performed only by people with a certain designation, and to grant power to various groups to control the designation. Meanwhile, employers must also be convinced of the benefits of classifying their workers as one of the professional designations.
A perfect example of this system is engineers: how many civil engineers have and maintain their P.eng (or whatever)? Alot - because they have to in order to get and keep jobs. But computer engineers? Practically none have their P.eng, because they don't need to, and employers aren't being pressured to require it.
So probably a better way to approach this issue is to find programmers that are working in fields that affect public safety, and pressure your government to require some sort of regulation. Once the first step has been taken, it will be easier to convince employers/government/the public that regulation is required for all programmers.
you're a fool - thanks for contributing to the insanity. have some respect for life... and the living.
Hey! I honestly resent that remark. I have not one but two codes of ethics that I adhere to strictly. I know that the majority of programmers out there are only in it for the money, but I am not.
I hold myself as having more of a burden than almost any other profession, because let's face it: while a surgeon can maim one person at a time on the operating table, the nature of software makes it so that everything I do can affect the lives of hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions.
Nathan's blog
Because our health system is seriously brain-damaged. Ask almost any doctor about this. Those that disagree are likely not very good at their jobs. I know a lot of doctors, and none of the good ones think the system works well. They think it's a miracle that it works at all.
The problem I see with doctors is that they all want us to believe that they're 'hollier than thou'.
I don't see that. In some cases, yes, but you'll find that applies to people in general. Many doctors do, however, care deeply about their work - and it's supremely easy for this particular line of work to be justified or explained. It's very direct in relation to most ethical systems. It's comparatively tough to provide the same kind of justification for programming, though I think many of the same justifications do apply when you get down to it.
Essentially, I'm just trying to say this: don't broadly criticize an entire profession - it's never that simple.
[|]
Are you shitting me? I don't know about you, but every piece of software I've ever seen written by an "engineer" (including EE's) was complete and utter crap with no regard whatsoever for good program design and a severe lack of understanding about the systems they were programming in.
Don't get me wrong - I've seen shit code from "computer scientists" as well. But usually these people had just switched from another major because CS made more money, and had no experience programming at all.
Nathan's blog
You obviously don't understand anarchism.
Nathan's blog
As much as I am against Unions, It'd be very interesting to see a Union of computer-programmers set up for specific Platforms and purposes, it would add some stability to the computer industry also (fixed rates, prices, etc)...
But, to get all programmers to take an oath not to program with negative results would create a utopia of a computer world, but unfortunately, could also never happen.
Mike
But, of course, this is all under the pre-supposition that pornography (and supporting it directly or indirectly) is morally right or wrong.
You're absolutely right, but again, I think you're missing my real message here. I'm not suggesting that you try to control anyone's life. Much to the contrary, I strongly believe in self-determination. You can try to intervene and talk some reason into someone, but you cannot control them, it is ultimately their choice. But if nobody were to buy videos that your daughter makes, then there would be no market for it, and hence, she would not make the videos anymore. That is the crux of my argument. If we, as people, do not support things that we see as being unethical, they will not be as prevalent. Simple economics, really. But you might come back with the response "come on, be realistic, even if I don't support it, plenty of other people will". But that is not an ethical viewpoint. It is not valid to compromise one's ethics for the simple reason that others don't seem to care. You may not respect them or feel sorry for them (which is a shame). But that in no way means that you should watch them do it. I don't believe you can provide me any moral justification for supporting the system that allows someone to put themselves in positions that demeans and degrades them further. Same here. So then, you might understand why we can't support pornography any longer. The objectification of women changes men's psychology towards them. They are no longer seen with respect, but as objects for the taking. A man may not feel any moral qualms about taking sex from a woman. You can call this shoddy reasoning if you like, I don't care. The evidence is all around me and plain to see. I see it and hear it every day in men's attitudes and thoughts about women. Ok, it's obvious now that you have no feelings about these girls (which saddens me). But my other point, which I neglected to make in my other comment, is the overall damage it does to society, and especially women. I don't believe this can be overlooked so easily. Again, you're missing my intent. I don't believe that you can fix social problems with legislation. This goes for the so-called "War on Drugs", prohibition, pornography, etc. I personally believe pornography should be legal, everywhere, and controlled (as in Holland). People do it anyway, so we should ensure that it's more safe for the women involved. I don't believe I ever made the suggestion that any of this should be made illegal, did I? I'm saying exactly what you're saying, that the choices are in the hands of the individuals. You are an individual. It is your choice whether or not you wish to support this practice. I don't believe that an intellectually honest and moral person can do so. But I know I can't convince you of that. My analogy about fur was meant to show that even though you do not personally commit the act, by supporting said act, you are still ethically guilty of that act. It had nothing to do with the fur trade itself. So, my main argument again: It is not necessarily your "problem" what people decide to do with their lives. You can't control their choices. But you can control yours. And if you choose to aid in the proliferation of these lifestyle choices, you are ethically guilty. That's too bad you think that way. I hope it doesn't backfire on you, when someday you need someone's help, and nobody is there to give it, because they think the way you do. As a non-sequitur, I personally think that this mindset is a product of Western "Civilization". I don't think you will find this way of thinking in tribal cultures. And again, I'm deeply sorry about it."Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect."
-- Chief Seattle
I think it should be obvious now that I'm not trying to dictate people's lives, merely change people's viewpoints (like yours). I just wanted to be doubly-sure that point was understood. I know I won't succeed so easily, but if I even plant a seed in someone's mind who reads this, and that seed grows into something great, I would be immensely gratified.P.S. Sorry about the flame-ness of my first comment. Sometimes I get so emotional about certain things I don't restrain myself. But I'm getting better. All part of my self-improvement quest :-)
I modded the Troll Investigation and I got
Ok, this is getting really long now, I'll end it. Take care...
I modded the Troll Investigation and I got
Frivolous lawsuits. Barratry.
I don't see bar associations disciplining lawyers that engage in those.