Ethics, business, computers, and a large piece of pi.

In recent days, there has been a small explosion in the open source / Linux community involving a recent letter. This started a discussion on my local Linux mailing list about "what did Microsoft do wrong?", which turned into "Microsoft is evil, so they probably did this", which turned into a discussion on ethics. Unsurprisingly, the lines were drawn into "ethics is ethics and has always been ethics" and "ethics vary by region and point in history". Then things got a little heated.

My friend Nathan posted a little piece about how ethics can differ, and used my personal belief against eating mammals as an example. Of course, I couldn't leave it as that, so I wrote a little response. It was fun to write and, according to the replies, it was also fun to read. Thus, I include it here for your general amusement. I anticipate that someone who doesn't work/play with IT might not follow everything, but I hope that it is enjoyable regardless of technical skill level. (Also, I expect that I probably bungled a bit on my historical references. Sorry lollardfish, feel free to correct me if I have done so.)

( Cut for length and general technical stuff )