Can Open Source Give Comfort To the Enemy?

zlite writes "We make open source Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones), mostly for geomapping and other amateur uses. One of our problems is that most people think of UAVs as Scary Things, and despite our efforts to prove otherwise there's always the risk of regulatory crackdowns. We have amateur UAV participants from around the world, but now they've been joined by an Iranian in Tehran, who has made a UAV in the colors of the Iranian flag. My instinct is that we should welcome everyone, everywhere, but I'm sure some in Washington worry that this looks like helping an 'Axis of Evil' country make advanced weapons. They could shut us down with the stroke of a pen. My question: is there ever a case for letting national security issues dictate the limits of an open source project?"

Comments

Teach a man to kill....

[headkase]

It's as simple as this: "they" do not think like "us". Our goals and interpretations of the world in general may not be compatible with each other. So pragmatically, don't give someone you don't fully trust the means to hurt you.
Oooooh, here come the liberals :)

Men like you

[michaelmalak]

How are you supposed to know? Fucking men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up. You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something; to create a life; to feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death and destruction.

Insightful?

[commodoresloat]

Let me get this straight ... your point is, whitey is gonna lose to the terrorists no matter what, so his best bet is to jump on a fucking space ship and colonize some distant galaxy?

Re:Give the

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yeah. If I kept drinking the Jizz that spurts from the end of Cheney's Dick, my brain would have rotted to the point of believing all that propaganda, too.