Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mitchell Kapor Leaves Groove Over TIA

Posted by timothy on from the conscious-conscience dept.

Deao writes "Mitchell Kapor, one of the founders of the EFF, has quit Groove. Supposedly he has left to pursue open source software interests, but insiders say he is unhappy with Groove's products forming a crucial part of the Total Information Awareness project. Read all about it at the NYTimes (Free Registration required)."

6 of 180 comments (clear)

  1. hmm by DonFinch · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm glad he's doing what feels right to him but, given the choice, I rather know the inside of the beast then be at its mercy.

    --
    -- Insert wisdom here:
  2. Ethics by Joe+the+Lesser · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Computer scientists are going to have the same kinds of battles that physicists did amidst the fallout of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,"

    I hadn't actually thought of it this way, but it's a good point. If in the future I find myself coding something dubious for a government or corporation, what is the correct ethical choice?

    --
    "I only speak the truth"
    Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
    1. Re:Ethics by RocketScientist · · Score: 4, Interesting

      OK, here's your ethical dilemma. Linux is Free Software (GNU/Linux is Free Software....heh). That means you can't put restrictions on use into the software license. That means that if the TIA wants to use Linux...they can. And we can either all stop working on it or we can assume that we're working for a greater good than TIA is evil.

      An interesting aside to the free software movement, no? Think about it, if you license something under GPL, you can't say who can or can't use it, just what baggage they have to handle in order to resell or distribute it (provide source if they modify it and resell it). Free means free, so that means terrorists, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, no matter which side of any particular war you choose, if you develop free software one implication is that people that you don't like can pick it up and use it to do things you don't like.

      That means that the government can use it also. To watch you. And that they've got the source to make sure there aren't any backdoors.

      A little bit of new perspective. I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing, just an unexplored thing.

  3. do you think.... by rob-fu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    kapor would have stepped down if he wasn't incredibly wealthy? IIRC he was one of the founders of Lotus...

  4. Re:Can you blame him for having a conscience? by pnatural · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Please forgive my picking nits, but I really don't like it when people express this idea incorrectly.

    Rights do not "no longer exist". You may have them or not have them, but they don't vanish because they are ideas. They are central to the human experience, and it's only thru collective will (or the end of a gun) do we decide who gets to exercise them and who does not.

    It's like that song that says "and I won't forget the men who died who gave that right to me". Those men didn't give me my rights - a higher power did. The founders of the USA realized this -- that these rights are inalienable.

    Only thru systematic, Orwellian control of language and thought can rights "no longer exist".

  5. Re:Can you blame him for having a conscience? by jd142 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The founders of the USA realized this -- that these rights are inalienable.

    And yet they denied them to women, blacks, non-land owners, etc. If the founders really believed all men were created equal, why did only certain men get rights?

    And don't forget, some of the first bills passed by Congress were the Alien and Sedition acts. The Alien act allowed the government to lock up non-citizen males age 14 and up who belonged to any country we were at war with. Didn't matter if they were innocent of any wrong doing. Congress threw the right to a fair trial right out the window. Luckily the British (you know, the people we were upset with) still had Magna Carta to protect their rights.

    And the Sedition act would punish you if you "write, print, utter or publish. . . writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States," which means that Rush Limbaugh could have been arrested for Sedition during the Clinton administration if the act were still enforced.

    Because of its weakness at the time, the Supreme Court didn't even rule them as unconstitutional (I don't know if they were ever approached about it; I couldn't find that.) The acts were eventually allowed to expire about 10 years later.

    So please, don't venerate the founders of the USA. They were human. In other words, they were hypocrites. They talked about the inalienable rights of men, but kept slaves. The south wanted slaves counted as men for population reasons, so they could have more representatives, but they didn't want them to have rights. They engaged in acts of terrorism (Boston Tea Party) and used biological weapons against indigenous peoples (small pox blankets). And even today this country engages in taxation without representation: the citizens of the District of Columbia pay federal taxes but have no elected Federal representatives. And their population is greater than Wyoming's. Imagine if Congress decided to tell Wyoming citizens that they would continue to pay federal taxes but would lose their Senators and Representatives!

    Sorry, don't mean to be a troll or flame bait, but the veneration of the "Founding Fathers" really gets to me after awhile.