What is unethical about contributing (for free!) to the development of closed-source software?

And if you’ve decided that making open-source software inherently contributes to the development of closed-source software, what’s your recommendation?

If it’s unethical to work on closed-source and open-source, do we all just go home and stop writing code?

When I started to work on PLC4X I was hoping people would be using it to build commercial applications and either making money with it, saving money or building better products. That's why I stronly believe in the Apache License and am not a GPL advocate.

However I would never have expected that allmost nothing is returned by anyone.

I mean, I'm an IT consultant and I was doing consulting with other projects that I work on and I'm fine with that. I love doing that, I love giving training, mentoring people and companies to become open-source contributors. I saw that the effort-to-improvement-ratio open-source could bring to the automation industry was just incredible 5 years ago. That's why I put so much work into the project and I continue doing so ... just differently ;-)

We're getting into technicalities here, but in my opinion the ethical thing to do is to share your code freely for everyone else to use, however at the same time use a license that requires them to do the same with any code they derive from yours. This is absolutely nothing new, ref. the GPL.

It’s clear that your preference is that people do that. What’s not clear is why the MIT license and closed source software are unethical.

Not everything we dislike is a violation of ethics.

> What’s not clear is why the MIT license and closed source software are unethical.

Is it ethical to allow unethical behavior?

I feel like we’re in a loop. Are you saying that making software under MIT or closed source licenses allows unethical behavior in a way that makes creation of that software unethical? If so, can you back that up instead of asking rhetorical questions?

I write software personally, which I license under the MIT license. I write software professionally, which is closed source. I don’t believe either of those things is inherently unethical. There are obviously examples of any kind of software that are unethical, and there are ways that closed source licenses enable unethical behavior, but I’m not following the expansion of that to the license choice itself.

MIT licenses enable closed source software that would otherwise have to be open source, is the point.

“Would otherwise” assumes a default state where the original software was GPL, presumably. But the fact that the MIT license allows for use in closed source software isn’t in dispute.

Do you (and the other commenters in this thread) believe that closed source software is unethical? And if so, why?

And do you believe that MIT-licensed software is also unethical, because it allows for closed source usage? If so, why?

I question whether allowing unethical behavior is, in itself, unethical, when you have the option of not allowing it at all. I didn't mention software licenses anywhere in the question.

To use a situation common these days, knowing people wearing masks are less likely to pass COVID to others wearing masks, is it ethical to have a restaurant that allows clients not to wear masks? Is it ethical to operate a whore house that doesn't mandate regular AIDS tests?

This is a thread about software licensing. If you’re looking to have a theoretical debate about whether in general unethical behavior is unethical to support, I guess that’s a fun debate, but it’s not really relevant to this post or comment tree.

If it is unethical to support unethical behavior in a general context, why would it be different within the narrow contexts of software licensing?

I’ll copy my questions from above:

Do you (and the other commenters in this thread) believe that closed source software is unethical? And if so, why?

And do you believe that MIT-licensed software is also unethical, because it allows for closed source usage? If so, why?

You just keep repeating that it’s unethical to support unethical things. Since that’s amazingly general and you’re commenting on a thread about software licensing, I assumed you were attempting to comment on the ethics of closed source and/or MIT licensed things. If you don’t think those things are unethical, just repeating overarching premises about ethics seems irrelevant. If you do think the things being discussed here are unethical, it would make for a much more engaging conversation if you’d say so and elaborate on why, vs just driving circles around the discussion repeating the kind of slogan I’d read on a picket sign at a philosophers march.

Stupid it may be but it is not unethical. We live in supposedly free world and one has full right to decide how their work is to be used. Don't like it, just use GPL or whatever license you might want to concoct to prevent / limit corporate use.