I want to write software that helps kill people.

That you have a computer at all is in large part due to the overwhelming demand for accurate ballistics data and codebreaking during WW2. It's very easy to play '6 (military) degrees of separation' and conclude that virtually any human activity supports the killing of people. Like baking at home? Your bakery hobby slightly reduces the demand for manufactured bread, thus making it more affordable to a heartless military machine. And so on.<p>If you're not actively and directly involved in military activities, there's little that you can do about the knock-on effects of whatever it is that you're engaged in; and even if you can quantify the human cost of your activities, it needs to be offset against the positive externalities. For example, the same software that allows Palantir to identify 'bad guys' who are potential targets for military attack is equally capable of identifying peacemakers or other constructive individuals who are good candidates for receiving financial aid or suchlike.<p>Technology itself is neutral. Don't use it as a stick to beat yourself over the imperfect state of the world.

The question that this comes down to is a question of one's world-view and philosophy of responsibility, guilt, and concept of sin. It says something about how you conceive of those things if you trace responsibility from "meaningful contribution to a NoSQL storage engine" to "code was executed by a system used by people to seek terrorists and justify an eventual drone strike".<p>Due to relativism, I can't tell you whether your view is intrinsically right or wrong in a manner that all people are guaranteed to respect, but I can tell you: I would be upset if you used that logic to find fault with someone <i>else</i> who wrote NoSQL database engines, and blamed them for killing people (terrorists or no). I think it would be horribly unfair and modestly ridiculous - and if you agree with that when it applies to other people, consider whether you are, in fact, giving yourself a fair shake here.

The fact of the matter is that war is a basic function of human societies, as much as food production or waste disposal. Unsurprisingly, it thus taps the ingenuities of the society in the same way as those other areas. It both benefits from ingenuities intended for other purposes, and results in inventions itself that can be used for other purposes. And for better or worse, war is a great way to get the public to support R&#38;D spending. DARPA could not be what it is without being a part of the DOD. See: <a href="http://tech.mit.edu/V114/N29/dod.29n.html" rel="nofollow">http://tech.mit.edu/V114/N29/dod.29n.html</a>, <a href="http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres07/12.00.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://web.mit.edu/annualreports/pres07/12.00.pdf</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge</a>.<p>And let's face it, its something you benefit from tremendously. You do not want a society in which the US does not have the power to kill everyone. That is a society in which your lifestyle is not as nice as it is now. Indeed, with the challenges we face in the coming century (oil, water scarcity, etc) as well as the ascension of India and China as world powers, our ability to kill people is going to be more important than ever.

"It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter."<p>Nathaniel Borenstein<p>That sums it up for me.

You also give money to kill people (You do pay taxes, right?). How come you are not bothered about that also?<p>It's pointless to think about the impact of a micro action on a macro event. Especially macro things such as war. There are so many different factors that culminate in a war.<p>And about the good/evilness of war, that has a been a debate since ages. One can never win this argument.

This logic seems like quite a stretch. I'd imagine the person who designed a hammer or a screwdriver isn't preoccupied with the fact that it might be used in helping to build a bomb factory.

I wrote, but never published [1], a variation on the MIT license that has specific clauses stating that the software can only be used by parties who dont own/manufacture/trade firearms or ballistics. I never published it because I am not a lawyer, and it probably would have come across as an elaborate troll. If anyone is interested, I'll release it.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/binarymax/Non-violent-License" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/binarymax/Non-violent-License</a>

This has nothing to do with open source. It's just a consequence of living in a warmongering superpower. Considering that a good percentage of America's GDP goes towards killing brown people overseas, just about every economic action you take as an American is contributing towards killing people. If you extend certain moral frameworks far enough, just living in America is an evil act.

I vaguely recall license terms which disallow anyone from using the code for military purposes - maybe it's time to adopt stuff like GPL/CC by extending them with an (optional) "do not use this software in machines/systems which have the power to kill/hurt people, or enable people to do so"

I should've have noted that this came from the Philosophy in a Time of Software discussion list: <a href="https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/philosophy-in-a-time-of-software/SnV8qMUQc3Y" rel="nofollow">https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/philosophy-in-a-time...</a>

Check out Stanford's Encylopedia of Philosophy entry on double-effect: <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/" rel="nofollow">http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/</a>.<p>Essentially, double-effect means that your good actions can have unintended yet foreseen evil consequences. If you make a hunting rifle, and someone uses that to shoot children at a school, are you responsible? Not an easy question to answer.

I was once at a guest lecture by Bjarne Stroustrup (creator of C++ for those who don’t know), and during Q&#38;A, someone in the audience asked him how he felt about the fact that his work was used to kill people.<p>(The rationale behind the question was based on fighter jets, to some extent, using software written in C++.)<p>The question was not tongue in cheek. Everyone in the auditorium laughed, though.

I want to hack your software such that it always returns null. And then write software that identifies better distribution methods of food and water to famine and drought-stricken areas. Or maybe find the best areas to reseed of those that have been deforested.

If you work at McDonalds, you probably fed a soldier or a weapons designer, or CIA field operative. You'd have to drop out of productive society entirely to escape this dynamic.

This is the nature of living in a free society (or at least what parts of one that are left). You don't get to dictate what other people do. If you release your code "free to the world", you have to open your idealistic eyes and realize that that might include things you aren't comfortable with. And to maintain consistency with the views that led you to opening your code, you have to be okay with it. That is the unfortunate conceit of most people who claim to be tolerant and open minded, they often mean "but only for things I approve of".

It's even worse than that! I hear people use hammers to build buildings where people work on military projects that eventually kill people! Clearly, we need to stop people from using hammers for evil. Boycott the hammer industry today.

&#62; I'm reasonably certain I would be orders of magnitude less well off and less happy if open source didn't exist as a concept.<p>Right... what happened to just saying 'hundreds/thousands of times better off#' in hyperbolic sentences? Too pedestrian?<p>#Of course you can replace 'better' with any fitting adjective.