[dan-robertson]

I Disagree. But in particular I a think it is important for one to care about the ethics of what one works on and whom one works with. This is an industry where people are generally in a position to be choosy about what they do and it is a myth that it’s generally possible to separate something technical or theoretical from how it is used.

Even if one releases software with a license like the GPL that explicitly doesn’t constrain what the software is used for, I think one should still care about how it is used and the ethical implications of it.

[free2OSS]

I'll give you some credit since Programming is not Science/Engineering but rather some combination of Science/Authority/Tradition/Art.

But in science fields, authors names don't really matter. The same outcome will exist regardless who is studying it.

[bitdizzy]

> But in science fields, authors names don't really matter. The same outcome will exist regardless who is studying it.

I'm curious, how much experience do you have in scientific academia? Names matter a great deal in my experience. A lot of results are simply ignored if they're not backed by a big name, and many experiments will simply not be done unless there's a big name to attract funding in the first place.

[dan-robertson]

I may have written ‘Programming’ but so was mostly thinking about mathematics. It is wishful thinking to ignore the ethical implications of one’s work in academia