copenhagen interpretation of ethics

Current situation:

So let me get this straight... Up until now, Amazon/AWS hasn't donated anything to cURL. And noone hated them for it.

Suddenly when someone - probably some manager with a limit of \$5000 on donations - pushes through a donation of \$5000, everyone hates them? Are you serious? If I was a cURL developer this would absolutely make my day.

When you develop OSS (Open Source Software), you aren't doing it for the money, you don't even know whether anyone is going to be using your software. And sure, you could limit the license so that big corps have to pay, but because that'd become a legal nightmare for them quickly, they (and probably by extension everyone else as well) will just skip your software and use or make something else.

So you make it copyleft or fully open, and then thank for donations no matter their size. A shitton of OSS devs don't get any donations.

• /u/amunak

Philosophical followup:

Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics

The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics says that you can have a particle spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time – until you look at it, at which point it definitely becomes one or the other. The theory claims that observing reality fundamentally changes it.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of Ethics says that when you observe or interact with a problem in any way, you can be blamed for it. At the very least, you are to blame for not doing more. Even if you don’t make the problem worse, even if you make it slightly better, the ethical burden of the problem falls on you as soon as you observe it. In particular, if you interact with a problem and benefit from it, you are a complete monster. I don’t subscribe to this school of thought, but it seems pretty popular.