[pypy-svn] rev 1950 - pypy/trunk/doc/funding

[lac at codespeak.net]

Author: lac
Date: Wed Oct 15 11:25:44 2003
New Revision: 1950

Modified:
   pypy/trunk/doc/funding/B7.0_other_issues.txt
Log:
Add ethical.  see if you like.



Modified: pypy/trunk/doc/funding/B7.0_other_issues.txt
==============================================================================
--- pypy/trunk/doc/funding/B7.0_other_issues.txt	(original)
+++ pypy/trunk/doc/funding/B7.0_other_issues.txt	Wed Oct 15 11:25:44 2003
@@ -1,9 +1,7 @@
 Other Issues
 ============
-
 Ethical Considerations
 ----------------------
-
 A. Proposers are requested to fill in the following table  
 
 Does your proposed research raise sensitive ethical questions related to:
@@ -42,6 +40,38 @@
 Confirmation : the proposed research involves none of the issues
 listed in section B							YES.
 
+There are however, other ethical issues which reflect the philosophy
+of the Open Source Community.  We believe that it is unethical to
+withold the source of fundamental tools upon with other people rely.
+When a tool that is critical to your business or your daily life
+fails, it becomes vital for you to get it fixed.  Either you can fix
+it yourself, or you can pay somebody else to fix it for you.  If that
+vital tool is proprietary, then you are immediately stuck in a Market
+situation.  If the only people who can fix the tool work for high
+wages in a country with a high standard of living, then all their
+dependent customers who live in poorer conditions are at a
+disadvantage, often an unsurmountable one.  For lack of the financial
+resources to pay for needed fixes, small businesses fail or produce
+software that performs poorly in the marketplace, riddled with bugs
+that cannot be addressed.  This, in turn, prevents those poorer
+companies from attaining success.  They are marginalised, all
+unintentionally, by the normal workings of the Market.  They become
+a second-tier 'user' of the product, dependent on their software
+provider to 'do the right thing', even though 'the right thing'
+may vary enormously from region to region. 
+
+Thus, when you deny people the option of being able to 'do it yourself' you
+contribute to the forces in society which produce wealth-based social
+differentiation and segregation.  'The rich get richer and the poor
+get poorer'.  A compiler is an extremely fundamental too which one uses
+to create any sort of software which one can think of.  This is precisely
+the sort of tool that must be freely available to the rich as well as
+the poor, in all its entirity.  The poorer nations will then be in a
+non-dependent situation.  As they use their imaginations and creativity
+and labour to increase their own personal standard of living and that 
+of the communities where they live, they will have one fewer thing to
+worry about -- what will I do if my compiler has a bug?
+
 Gender Issues
 -------------