OT: [Cialug] Mandriva - open letter to Steve Ballmer

[kristau]

Apologies in advance for being pedantic and taking this WAY off the
topic of this mailing list (I've marked the subject as such, however):

Definitions from www.m-w.com:

Ethical:
1: of or relating to ethics <ethical theories>
2: involving or expressing moral approval or disapproval <ethical judgments>
3: conforming to accepted standards of conduct <ethical behavior>
4of a drug : restricted to sale only on a doctor's prescription

Ethics:
1 plural but sing or plural in constr : the discipline dealing with
what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation
2 a: a set of moral principles : a theory or system of moral values
<the present-day materialistic ethic> <an old-fashioned work ethic>
—often used in plural but singular or plural in construction <an
elaborate ethics><Christian ethics> bplural but sing or plural in
constr : the principles of conduct governing an individual or a group
<professional ethics> c: a guiding philosophy d: a consciousness of
moral importance <forge a conservation ethic>
3 plural : a set of moral issues or aspects (as rightness) <debated
the ethics of human cloning>

These very objective definitions of the words ethical and ethics are
wrought with subjective words such as "philosophy" and "theory".
However, the presence of the word "moral" (no less than 5 times)
suggests that ethics will be relative to the predominant moral
standards of the individual or culture.

Therefore, I posit that what is considered ethical or unethical is
strongly tied to an individual's culture and "community standards."
Thus these standards can vary quite widely on many scales -- from
local to global.  Yes, it is not OK to murder in 99.9% of the cultures
on this planet.  That's a global scale ethical standard.  Suicide,
however, is still acceptable in many cultures.

Back on topic, I'll venture a guess at what happened to Mandriva in
Nigeria.  Microsoft lost fair and square to Mandriva.  Being sore
losers, they offered the Nigerian government an offer they couldn't
refuse:  To pay for the Mandriva obligation and replace it with
Microsoft products for free.  Ethical?  By our standards, no.  We are
talking about the Nigerian government and Microsft here, though...

-- 
Tired programmer
Coding late into the night
The core dump follows

My GNUPG public key is available at http://www.kristau.net/public_key.asc