Some ethics are subjective, maybe even very, very subjective, but keep in mind, that most of the western society rules and laws are based on some general ethics like "killing other people is uncool", "robbing other people is uncool" or even "parking in front of a gateway is uncool".
I beg to differ -
all ethics are subjective. Many deaths have occurred throughout history because what is defined as "ethical" has been changed so often - try reading leviticus and see what passed for ethical behaviour a couple of thousand years ago. As for robbing, that was considered by some to be ethical during the second world war - providing that the victim fell into one of a small set of ethnic groups.
I beg to differ - There is a basis of ethics that is more or less consistent throughout semicivilized society. I wouldn't call it objective
but at least contingent with our living in social groups. The reading of Leviticus and the pondering of war crimes does show something about ethics, but not that it is all arbitrary (better word here than subjective) but that there is another axis to ethics, namely the size of the group which is considered under the ethical compass.
Let's start with the basis first. There are, indeed, some things that are universal in ethical systems: It isn't generally OK to steal from your fellow man. Neither is it OK to wound or kill him. It is generally considered unethical to "not do your part for the society", be it not foraging for food or not pay taxes. The reason is that we live in groups, and we do that in order to get certain utility out of it. It is good to have a group, where people takes turns keeping watch and tending the fire, so that those free can sleep. It makes sense to be in a group, where a day of bad luck in hunting or foraging is averaged out amongst more people, and so on. But for this to work, we need to be able to defuse the danger of being in a group - I.e. that that guy who is sleeping in the cave now will kill you while you're asleep.
So, we codify rules and call them ethics. Or divine commandments, or golden rules, or whatever. Thou shalt not kill, Treat your elders with respect, Share with those less fortunate than you. This, of course, applies to your fellow man, which originally was the other people in the tribe. Those other ones on the other side of the valley? They're not us, are they? Not
like us. They're barbarians, and it serves them right if we ambush them, steal their food and drag their women over here in their hair. Barbarians, of course, being the word the ancient greeks used to describe those that weren't them. Non-greeks. People who spoke foreign languages, that sounded like
Bar-bar-bar in the ears of the cultivated greeks. It is quite plain that people of that sort just isn't really worthy of the same treatment (neither were women, slaves or peasants, of course). Actually, serious attempts at making it a requisite for any good ethics to actually be universally applied is quite recent, and even so, we still see the same mechanisms at work. Those darned taliban, they're just not
human, are they? Living in caves, dressing in sheets...I say we bomb them back to the stone age!
But: When applied to whatever circle is considered the right size to encompass "our own", then there is always some fundamentals that are the same. An ethical system which actually encourages killing your neighbor and stealing their food is possibly theoretically possible, but the society which embraced it would never survive as a society. It is a necessary prerequisite for being a society worth being a part of.
This, of course, gives it a sort of sliding scale kind of feeling. A rule against killing is more or less necessary in an ethical system. Is it unethical to not pay taxes? Yes, well, most people would say it is, at least as long as the taxation is fairly distributed and that the money is used for the common goods of the society...but this is far less clear-cut and would be open for different levels of interpretation. Is it unethical to wear green lycra pants when grossly overweight? No. Unfortunately not. It is never a necessary rule for the well-being of the society as a whole. This all becomes a bit consensual, very language games a la Wittgenstein - There is a core of rules of ethics, and it is what our society deems is the core of the ethical rules. When the society changes, so the ethical requirements changes. Subjective? Yes, but subjective not to the whims of a single individual, but to the society as a whole.
With all that being said
So describing a coder as being "unethical" because he or she won't release source is merely proclaiming to the world that you don't agree with their decision, and that you'd like others to see them as somehow being wrong despite the fact that the only yardstick you can measure them with is created by your own prejudices. Describing this as "ethics" is just trying to persuade people with emotional blackmail to agree with your own agenda.
...I agree completely with this. Saying "This is unethical" about something like whether someone releases source code is just blackmail. Or, a bit more favourably, wishful thinking: Ethics is shaped by people. If enough people think that something is ethically wrong, then it will be. So if we act like it already is, perhaps it will happen? But it isn't there yet, and so it is just wrong.
