OT - Ethics in Business

Jerome Fine replies: The problem is with ethics - and likely Microsoft has no more lack of this feature than most other companies. But because they have more clout, it is more apparent. How many examples can you think of for other companies that have either tried or would like to do the same thing. If everyone except Microsoft was ethical and all said that they would stop doing business with or using Microsoft products until Microsoft behaved in an ethical manner, Microsoft would either behave ethically or disappear. When the ethical standard rises outside of Microsoft, it will rise inside Microsoft as well. As you stated in an earlier e-mail today: "If MS would just give us the source code, we could fix it for them." But if Microsoft gave us the source code, we would see just what "bugs" had been introduced for that purpose. Being forced to "license" source code which is guaranteed by law to reproduce the EXE files and all of the other files used to run an application would be the best safeguard against such behaviour. While the comments could be removed, looking at the different code between different versions would show the changes that were made to produce the "bugs". If enough users demanded a minimum standard of ethics, then requiring that source code be made available after a certain number of years have elapsed and a bug is not fixed would also accomplish the same result since seeing what Microsoft had done with previous versions would be an ethical revelation as well. There are probably many solutions to the ethical problem which do not impact (or have a negligible impact) on profits. But how can we expect any help from politicians when their ethics are likely just about the same as the companies they accept campaign contributions from. I don't expect any answer from this reply, but if we are complaining about Microsoft, perhaps we should look at ourselves as well. Sincerely yours, Jerome Fine