Re: Design principles and ethics (was Re: Execute without read (was [...]))

[Pierre THIERRY]

Scribit Bas Wijnen dies 28/04/2006 hora 15:21:
> > I admit I do sometimes think the same way (and do act in this way),
> > but I'm not sure it's not morally objectionable, sincerely.
> It isn't, it is worth a lot of praise.  The position of "I didn't do
> anything wrong, I only made it posible" combined with "I didn't know I
> was doing anything wrong, it was so easy" directly leads to bad things
> happening.

But we were not talking about doing or letting anyone do something
wrong. Instead, we talked about morally objectionable uses, which is
very different IMO.

> In practice, Alice can give Bob a binary, and it's well-known that
> reverse-engineering a binary is much harder than simply redoing the
> thing.

Still, this assertion is far from true in all cases, and thus should not
be considered a valid argument to prevent a feature.

> > Your conclusions about the fact that reverse engineering is harder
> > than writing from scratch, that NDA are dangerous and than educating
> > people instead of limiting them are, at best, true in the general
> > case.
> Eh, what is true in the general case is also true in a specific
> case...  You don't seem to mean that.

Maybe I was not as clear in English as I would have been in French: the
conlusions are _usually_ true (which translates in French to « en
général »), not always.

> > But building principles on the general or, worse, ideal case is a
> > very dogmatic position, IMHO.
> Of course it is.  What's the difference between a dogma and a design
> principle?

A dogma is a definite position that cannot admit any exception. Only in
mathematics, AFAIK, do principles never admit exceptions. Design
principles are not inflexible laws, merely strong guidelines.

> We should still educate Bob that he should talk to Alice and they
> would both be more productive when they look at each other's code.

Typically, yes. But when you teach, you quickly learn that showing even
a part of the solution is sometimes the worst thing to do with some
students.

Semantically,
Nowhere man
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