throwaway8592

With separation of power between law enforcement and legislative branches of government, it is indeed the job of the law enforcement officers to enforce laws even they do not agree with. Of course, there is a threshold beyond which anyone in deep moral disagreement with a policy can and should protest in a variety of civil ways (including quitting such law enforcement jobs), and this is a normal part of how the checks-and-balances of power works.

But you must acknowledge that there are many who do not fundamentally disagree with the underlying laws, at least not to a magnitude such that they believe it is worth protesting. And as such, we have officers who enforce those laws, who have not (at this time) quit their roles.

Therefore, to the extent that one believes this form of government with checks and balances yields more humane results (on average, over time) than one which merges legislative/judiciary/executive power, and to the extent that you acknowledge legitimate moral opinions exist that are different from your own, it definitely can be argued that it's moral to continue enforcing laws you do not personally agree with -- up to a point.

The question is, what is the breaking point where a law enforcement officer protests against a horrible law by refusing to enforce it, quits, or otherwise?

Take almost any politically divisive issue, and you will find there's not a very easy answer here -- especially because each person will have a slightly different moral opinion on the matter.

You're making an excellent point that I think people are misunderstanding, unfortunately:

Let's say github's goal was to define license terms such that ICE is banned, but not other legitimate companies that do a lot of good for the world.

It would be great if solving this was as easy as saying "you can only use this if you never aim to separate children from their families", but it's not, because such a term would also require you to boycott Child Protective Services -- which can and does save children victims from horribly abusive parents and other terrible circumstances.

I've personally known people who were repeatedly raped by a family member throughout their early childhood. This is incredibly, devastatingly evil. It DOES happen, and if after acknowledging this, you seriously think there is still NO circumstance in which a child should be separated from their family -- then you are a horrible human being. But I don't think any of the downvoters think this, so I am genuinely curious: Why do you really think such a simple, un-nuanced license term would work without harmful side-effects?

Note: You can't just say "we'll enforce the license terms subjectively". Selective enforcement defeats the whole point of adding it into your terms of service or licensing terms -- because then, you might as well just go back to ad-hoc boycotting as per the personal ethics of your corporation's senior leadership. Aside from that, you do have to precisely define what you mean -- precisely which scenarios are or are not tolerable to you, etc.