ethicsincompsci

1. In order to make people more interested in something, it can be helpful to wrap it in something else. This is known as abstraction.  --  I agree. I remember being taught in classes that in order to get someone to be more receptive of criticism you need to make a sandwich (wrap it), compliment  --  critique  --  compliment.
2. Never lose the child like wonder.  --  I agree. I think the more we grow, the more our priorities change. It becomes easier to be lazy and lose interest in having curiosity, but curiosity is what creates the world.

Frank Strong was a simple man. He enjoyed iced coffee, crisp fall morning air, and tending to his ant farm. While he loved to indulge in the small things in life, Frank worked long hours for a large software development company. He drove an hour and a half into the city to find himself crammed into the gloomy basement office every day. He didn’t resent his job though. He loved to develop code and create things, so he didn’t mind the working conditions.

Frank was known by several coworkers as the man to go to if you were really stuck on something. He may have been low on the totem pole, but he could solve most bugs given enough time. Several of his coworkers regularly visited him in the basement to chat or get advice on issues they were having. Many of them would even bring him a cup of coffee to sit next to the other empty cups on his desk that had been chugged in the late hours of the night. They would always joke that Frank was too nice for his own good since he never complained about the loud noises or constant interruptions from the cleaning staff or the multiple copy machines that sat across the room from him. His office was more of a corner in the janitorial closet located in the storeroom. Being downstairs, he had to take extra precautions to keep his electronics and computers off the damp floor and surfaces.

A lot of the office staff had this issue. Downstairs or not, the building was old and leaked something fierce. Many employees had to start over on their code or work after a computer fell victim to a newfound leak in the ceiling. Frank had plans to change all of that though. He was currently working on an app for all the office computers, maybe even something they could sell, that would detect moisture and start backing up and saving even open files onto the company servers in a matter of seconds. He was almost finished with it; he just needed to clean up the code a bit to make the package size as small as possible. But it was completely functional as is, and he was going to present it to his boss after he was finished refactoring.

Philip Horn was charismatic, charming, even the office favorite with all the supervisors and bosses. He had every woman in the office wrapped around his finger, and all the men hung on every word like he was a superhero telling tales of adventure and crimefighting. He was also a software developer at the company, but since he was much less awkward, he managed to acquire a corner office overlooking the nearby lake. It was the dream office of many of his coworkers.

Frank didn’t mind helping most people since he enjoyed the chats and company that came along with it. He was isolated in the basement, so he welcomed just about anyone into his tiny cave. Almost anyone. Philip was one person that constantly found himself in Frank’s already crammed space because he couldn’t find a way to fix rather simple bugs. Frank didn’t mind this, he still liked having someone to talk to. The issues started when his supervisor started reprimanding him for taking up Philip’s precious time. Nothing serious was ever done to him, but it killed his happy laid-back vibe that he tried to keep in the office.

Last month, Frank was putting the finishing touches on his new app when Philip walked in for the sixth time that day. Frank knew he would get an email at minimum about Philip being in his office but trying to keep a good attitude he sighed and gave him a half-hearted smile. “Still couldn’t get it to work?”

“No. I’m not sure what is wrong, but I tried reverting to the last commit like you said to. Now git won’t let me commit anything else. It says something about needing to merge or something?” Philip grabbed a fold out chair leaned against the wall and pulled it up to Frank’s desk before he could say anything else.

“I see. You probably just need to fix your merge conflicts and commit the fixes. Then it should be back to how it was. But I can remote into your computer. Did you leave it logged in?” Frank pulled up the software he used to remote control his coworkers’ computers to help them fix things.

“No, was I supposed to?” Philip played mindlessly with the rubber ducky sitting next to Frank’s monitor.

“Yeah, I think we had this issue last time too. No worries. I can go log in. That should work fine.” Frank bit his tongue as to not tell Philip he had mentioned this to him 17 times already in the last week, but who was counting?

He didn’t bother logging off his own computer since Philip was always so mesmerized by the rubber ducky and his other trinkets he kept on his desk. Truthfully Philip probably wouldn’t have been able to cause any issues on his task anyway since it required him to take several steps to start the program to begin with. He left his app minimized on his second screen since he was about to go on break anyway, that way he could quickly start the refactoring process and make the most of his short break.

It took roughly 20 minutes to get to Philips office and most of the way back down to the basement. Philip had one of the larger private offices on the fourth floor, and employees at Frank’s level weren’t allowed to use the elevator unless it was medically necessary. Unsurprisingly when he returned, Philip was already gone. Frank assumed he either decided to goof off for the rest of the day or go charm the secretary that Philip loved to flirt with. Neither was very uncommon for Philip, so Frank shrugged and sat back at his desk.

Weird. He thought to himself. I thought my app was minimized. Maybe I’m not getting enough sleep lately since I have spent some many nights working on this.

• “The facts of the case.” Here is where you describe the case in your own words.
• “Analysis.” Examine the case in terms of the consequentialist and deontological approaches.
• “Conclusions.” 
• “Future environment.” Describe your vision of a future in which technology is more advanced than today, or society has changed in some significant way.
•  

• A link or other citation to the case you are using, or if it is from personal experience, point that out.
• A list of 5 or more important facts about the case in your own words. You can refer to these as reminders when you tell your group members about the case.
• A list of questions (3 or more) that could get an interesting and enlightening discussion going if you were in a discussion group, or that you would find interesting to consider. See the “Questions to ask during discussion” tab on the course web page for some suggestions in developing your discussion questions.

Hint: To find cases to discuss related to the theme of this unit, intellectual property, you could for example do a web search on:

ethics cases

or use news articles, personal experience, things you found on the web, on paper, etc. Professional neatness and clarity of format counts!

• Add the following three additional questions to your list of questions:
  • What does virtue ethics say about this case?
  • What does utilitarianism say about this case?
  • What does deontology say about this case?

1. Google copied declaring code from Oracle's API, though they asked to use the API to begin with and Oracle declined.
2. While Google was trying to create the Android platform and make it free for developers to use, Oracle would make companies pay to put their software on their devices.
3. Congress pass a law saying basically that declaring code was copyrightable.
4. The courts decided that Google had infringed upon the copyright Oracle held, but needed to debate whether fair use came into play.
5. The courts decided there were 4 factors that could let Google off the hook in a fair use defense but that Google only had 1 out of 4 going for it and the others didn't apply because Google didn't change the code for a purpose other than what Oracle had created it for. Google didn't add anything to it to constitute fair use.

1. If Oracle made the API free for developers to use anyway, even if the software costed money, why is it such an issue that Google wanted to use it? Why not just let them since they asked to begin with? Instead they went to write their own and use the parts that developers were familiar with.
2. As a developer myself who has worked with Java and Android, I am curious what Google uses now since the courts ruled in favor of Oracle. Because while I have not used Oracle's API, I know that Android development is still extremely simple and that is one of the reasons Google wanted to use the declaring code to begin with, because Java developers of the time were used to the API calls used in Oracles and would make for more developers coming to Android to make more Android based content.
3. Again as a developer I would like to know how code itself can really be copyrightable. While Google did infringe for the declaring code, like mentioned in the court documents, a method or system can't be copyrighted. And with Google not taking the full code, its hard to say in our industry that taking only a part of the code is copyright infringement. There are several ways to accomplish the same goal in programming. So even if someone has the same idea as you they can take an alternate route to get there. That doesn't mean you can declare copyright on that. I know the case focused mainly on the declaring code itself since that was copied verbatim, but its still a bit iffy of a case if you ask me. To me that's like saying 2 chocolate cakes from 2 different bakeries are the same cake. Both bakeries will have their own recipes, their own cook times, their own way of doing it. The product is still different even if the idea is the same.