My roommate and I had a fairly heated discussion tonight concerning ethics of the software industry. We both are majoring in computer related areas (I'm in Computer Information Systems, he's Computer Science) and are even on the same team in our Software Development capstone class. Beyond school, and on a much more personal level though, our views are pretty different. I'm a user and advocate of what is known as Free/Open Source Software (FOSS). The "Free" does not refer to price (although most FOSS is free), but rather the user's freedom to use, change, and distribute software as they like. FOSS has made a big impact in my life, and over the years I've tried to introduce him to that same joy, but I've not had much luck with that. He seems content with the status quo and isn't really interested in making any sort of change. I for one have become tired of the monopolistic Microsoft status quo of limited computing over the years. I sometimes have a hard time understanding why someone wouldn't want to switch, so I guess it makes sense to some people that there isn't any need to change anything.

Tonight's discussion focused mainly on a topic raised in another one of our classes where we've been reading a really boring book on ethics. I don't remember much about the book or how our discussion evolved, but we eventually began talking about the ethics of software companies concerning support for their older products. Software does not have a shelf life and does not degrade over time, so its hard to say how long people can and will use it and even harder to say how long the developer should maintain it. In class, I brought up the example of Microsoft and their support for the Windows 98 operating system. For those who might not know, Microsoft had announced near the end of 2003 that support for this operating system would end January 1st of 2004. This caused an uproar among many developing countries that still relied on older computers running Windows 98. These countries would no longer be able to recieve support, including patches and updates, for this still viable operating system. For those like my roommate who have lived in our American throw-away society, this doesn't mean a whole lot, because our answer to anything that breaks or is more than a few years old is to just buy a new one. But for the millions of people around the world still using Windows 98, that isn't really an option. $100 bucks might not seem like a lot to us, but to many people around the world, that $100 is life changing. And when speaking of large organizations needing to upgrade, those $100 upgrades add up quickly. So when can Microsoft end support for Windows 98? Well for now, Windows 98 is still widely used and since Microsoft is the only one who is able to support it, I think Microsoft has a responsibility to its users to continue to provide support for it. There is certainly no law that says they have to and if you've ever read the License Agreement from a Microsoft product they don't provide any sort of warranty on their software.

My roommate wanted to know what I thought the magic cutoff number was for the number of users a piece of software needs to have to still demand support. 1,000? 100,000? 1,000,000? I couldn't give him one, but I don't think that's the point either. If you give a number to this situation, it no longer is about ethics but just about following some guideline. We can give a robot a set of guidelines to follow and it will follow them exactly, but this does make the robot ethical. We as humans have the ability to look beyond just doing right to what IS right. Is it right to tell millions of people that they're just out of luck because the software you sold them, which they paid for, now has errors that are not their fault, and now they must pay up for something newer or piss off? I know we live in a Capitalistic society, but does that mean our compassion for people can be thrown away like everything else? I would even argue that it's Microsoft's own monopolistic, greedy ambitions that lead to this situation in the first place. For a long time there were no viable alternatives to Microsoft and people have become entangled in proprietary software. But now, FOSS has risen to a level that makes people take notice. Many of those who were to be affected by the loss of Windows 98 support threatened to finally free themselves of Microsoft. This is becoming a disturbing trend for Microsoft as many goverments and corporations have switched to Linux. Microsoft had to decide whether it wanted to anger millions of potential customers or continue support. Eventually they decided to continue supporting Windows 98.

So does this make Microsoft an ethical company now? I don't think so. I think this was motivated purely by their bottom line and the desire to continue their monopoly. Don't even try to talk to me about ethics when you're whole motivation is having money and making more of it.

I'm sorry this has just been somewhat of a rambling mess, I've just had so many thoughts running thru my head and i'm having a hard time keeping them coherent. Goodnight folks.