It seems to me that the ethical issues are just going to get messier as our technology gets more sophisticated. What do we do if it turns out that one of these 'tweaked' stem cells can be turned into an embryo by some relatively simple technical process? It looks to me as if we're going to eventually have to make some relatively arbitrary decisions about where the line between potential life and just a blob of cells is drawn. If we ultimately can take any human cell and turn it into a nascent embryo (and I would suspect that a blob of stem cells isn't that far off) then any chunk of human flesh is a potential child and any stem cell is a potential embryo. Personally, it seems to me that you've got a similar issue with a human egg and a sperm sample...if you just let them combine (and how much simpler a process can you get) then you've got a potential human being. Is the process of refusing to allow the sperm to fertilize the egg different in kind from failing to implant a fertilized egg in a woman? If so, how so? We choose an arbitrary point in the process (and one that in nature still has a prettyt good chance of naturally failing to produce a child...may eggs fail to implant in the natural conception process) and draw the line there. I find it hard to see this as anything more than an arbitrary decision...
It's not at all clear to me that a commercial company, selling a paid for distribution of a product is free of any responsibility to check it for issues before they begin selling it. I would expect that SCO (given their posession of the Unix source code and the fact that they obviously are capable of checking it against the Linux source) should have waited until they had completed the necessary checks before shipping their first copy of SCO Linux. A first-order automated scan of the code-bases shouldn't take an unreasonably long amount of time. Vetting the result shouldn't be too terribly hard either.
Companies that are selling supported Linux distributions should be held to a higher standard that those that simply permit free downloads. I would expect that any company distributing open source software that also holds a non-trivial amount of proprietary software would be well served to perform (and keep records of) some reasonable sort of scans for 'misplaced' source code in their open source products.
I've heard alot said about 'due diligence' issues on the free software side. Folks have indicated (SCO among them) that GPL should not apply to SCO distribution of Linux because the maintainers of the baseline should have caught any issues.
It seems to me that a similar 'due diligence' issue would suggest that SCO is negligent for having shipped Linux without first checking the product for infringement. Given that they have the source code for Unix and that they are clearly capable of checking it against the Linux code one could reasonably have expected them to verify that they weren't selling illegal code as part of their Linux distribution.
I would think that this might bolster the arguments that SCO Linux shipments automatically GPL any SCO code in the current baseline. If they had concerns they should not have shipped any CDs to SCO/Caldera Linux customers until they were comfortable with the legality of the product. Having shipped those CDs, they would seem to be explicitly signalling that they had completed any checking that they felt was needed.
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It seems to me that the ethical issues are just going to get messier as our technology gets more sophisticated. What do we do if it turns out that one of these 'tweaked' stem cells can be turned into an embryo by some relatively simple technical process? It looks to me as if we're going to eventually have to make some relatively arbitrary decisions about where the line between potential life and just a blob of cells is drawn. If we ultimately can take any human cell and turn it into a nascent embryo (and I would suspect that a blob of stem cells isn't that far off) then any chunk of human flesh is a potential child and any stem cell is a potential embryo. Personally, it seems to me that you've got a similar issue with a human egg and a sperm sample...if you just let them combine (and how much simpler a process can you get) then you've got a potential human being. Is the process of refusing to allow the sperm to fertilize the egg different in kind from failing to implant a fertilized egg in a woman? If so, how so? We choose an arbitrary point in the process (and one that in nature still has a prettyt good chance of naturally failing to produce a child...may eggs fail to implant in the natural conception process) and draw the line there. I find it hard to see this as anything more than an arbitrary decision...
Companies that are selling supported Linux distributions should be held to a higher standard that those that simply permit free downloads. I would expect that any company distributing open source software that also holds a non-trivial amount of proprietary software would be well served to perform (and keep records of) some reasonable sort of scans for 'misplaced' source code in their open source products.
I've heard alot said about 'due diligence' issues on the free software side. Folks have indicated (SCO among them) that GPL should not apply to SCO distribution of Linux because the maintainers of the baseline should have caught any issues.
It seems to me that a similar 'due diligence' issue would suggest that SCO is negligent for having shipped Linux without first checking the product for infringement. Given that they have the source code for Unix and that they are clearly capable of checking it against the Linux code one could reasonably have expected them to verify that they weren't selling illegal code as part of their Linux distribution.
I would think that this might bolster the arguments that SCO Linux shipments automatically GPL any SCO code in the current baseline. If they had concerns they should not have shipped any CDs to SCO/Caldera Linux customers until they were comfortable with the legality of the product. Having shipped those CDs, they would seem to be explicitly signalling that they had completed any checking that they felt was needed.