While I don't find researching malware to be immoral, I do find releasing malware seeds to the world to be exactly that.

I must disagree. Morality (to me at least) depends on intent. You said above that researching malware is not immoral, well, if someone is doing that research to make a virus with mal-intent, I find that immoral. But, in tachyon's case, if he is researching inorder to help, well I don't think that's immoral. Tachyon certainly did not 'release malware seeds to the world' so that the world would be worse off, he did it for quite the opposite reason. It's really a phillosophy here that I'm arguing over. It comes down to this: does the end justify the means or do the means justify the end? Personally, I believe the latter to be the case.

I don't know if a non-trivial virus can be written in Perl. I don't really want to find out.

Again, I must humbly disagree. If we can maturely discuss these issues, then mabey we can find a way to stop a perl virus. Your argument is one for ignorance, believing that ignorance is bliss. Well, it may be, but not after someone makes a perl virus and your faced with it anyway. I say it is much better to find out now, in a controlled enviornment; where we all are intellegent people with good intents.

The 15 year old, freshman programmer,
Stephen Rawls

In reply to Re: (tye)Re: Immoral? by srawls
in thread Morality of posting Perl "virus" code? by tachyon

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