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From: taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (Dave Taylor)
Newsgroups: mod.comp-soc
Subject: Re: The Ethics of Work
Message-ID: <530@hplabsc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Aug-86 13:44:42 EDT
Article-I.D.: hplabsc.530
Posted: Wed Aug  6 13:44:42 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Aug-86 05:43:34 EDT
Reply-To: hplabs!pyramid!hoptoad!gnu@hplabs.HP.COM
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
Lines: 47
Approved: taylor@hplabs
Reference: <524@hplabsc.UUCP>

This article is from pyramid!hoptoad!gnu (John Gilmore)
 and was received on Wed Aug  6 05:14:42 1986
 

I find that one of the advantages of being a consultant is that
I can refuse any job that doesn't fit my standards.  While I was at
Sun I was constantly working to convince people that even though it
would make money, they should not offer a Tempested version, they should
not make greyscale versions for the military mapmakers, etc.  All in
vain; they set up a federal systems division and are going gung-ho
to bring high tech computers to the people making better killing machines.
Lord knows Sun could (and still can) sell every computer they can build
to commercial concerns without helping the military, but many people
there didn't see anything wrong with it.

I can go along with the old "we are building tools that anyone can buy"
approach (see, this isn't a war machine, it's a general purpose
computer), but not once you start customizing the tools for the needs
of the spooks, giving them a year of your best peoples' time for
software and system integration work, etc.

I often get a few funny looks when I ask prospective clients "What's
the purpose of this device driver -- what is it hooking up and for
whom?".  Explaining the point of the question -- is it for the
MillaTree -- has always gotten respect from people, and I get passed on
to someone who knows the answer, if they don't.  One guy I got said "If
you have that attitude then you shouldn't work on this project anyway"
and never did tell me what it was for...but that was fine by me.  I haven't
had anybody try to tell me it was nonmilitary when it really was.

My attitude comes from a moral stance I choose to take:  I don't want my
individual efforts to further the goals of the warmakers.  That includes
helping them hook up a disk drive.  I don't even believe in killing
animals for food, I can't let myself be a party to killing people for
politics.

I think it's really sad that many of the best hackers in the North (San
Francisco) Bay Area are being sucked in to Livermore Labs.  This
includes Bandy, Erik Fair, and now Berry Kercheval.  These people at
one time had productive commercial jobs (Dual, Zehntel, hmm, maybe
Bandy was an academic?).  I don't think they are building bombs, but
they are hooking up disk drives.  From ragging them about working
there, I have some idea about why they are there, but I'll leave it for
them to explain to the public, if they choose.

[As people reply, please try to remember that we're more interested in WHY,
 not WHAT... --Dave]