perrin wrote:

Did you know that I spent a sleepless night adapting one of merlyn's Web Techniques columns to save our site from the DDoS attack that you were so proud of?

Proud? Please read my post again. While I have difficulty with what eToys did and I can certainly understand your position, I am not in any way, shape, or form "proud" of any DDoS attacks against eToys. I dislike what occured, but I absolutely do not support vigilantism. As I wrote in my post (emphasis added):

A friend -- and fellow Monk -- of mine believe's cracking to be ethical if you're "going after bad guys" like eToys or Microsoft. I feel that it's always bad because it encourages vigilantism.

I do not believe that cracking is ethical behavior. I do not engage in it (except our own company's Web sites and then only with permission) and under no circumstances would I support vigilante activities. It's wrong, period.

Update: In this post, I mentioned that programmers wouldn't work for companies that engage in unethical behavior and perrin rightly pointed out that it's not that simple.

My actual point, though, appeared to have been lost in the shuffle. With a guild or union, programmers could en masse have the power to ensure that the companies they work for rethink engaging in unethical behavior. As an individual, I tend not to have the power to effect much change in a large organization. However, if a company is faced with 50% of their staff walking out because the company decides to spam people (or whatever), then they are likely to rethink their position.

I worked for an insurance company where most of the programmers that I worked for were wonderful people, yet many people objected to some of the insurance company's behavior. That didn't mean the people were rotten. In the case of eToys, I singled them out because I objected to their behavior. That doesn't mean that I objected to any particular individual within that company.

perrin, I'm sure you're a great person and someone I'd love to sit down with over a beer and chat about Perl. If you took my post personally, I'm sorry it came across poorly.

Cheers,
Ovid

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