EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

An Exploration of the Ideologies of Software Intellectual Property: The Impact on Ethical Decision Making

Matthew McGowan (), Paul Stephens and Dexter Gruber

Journal of Business Ethics, 2007, vol. 73, issue 4, 409-424

Abstract: This article helps to clarify and articulate the ideological, legal, and ethical attitudes regarding software as intellectual property (IP). Computer software can be viewed as IP from both ethical and legal perspectives. The size and growth of the software industry suggest that large profits are possible through the development and sale of software. The rapid growth of the open source movement, fueled by the development of the Linux operating system, suggests another model is possible. The large number of unauthorized copies of software programs suggests that many people do not believe in laws regarding software copyright. There are many and varied views of software as IP, even within the information systems (IS) profession. In this article, four distinct subgroups of IS professionals are identified. The article describes the four subgroups and their respective ideological views on software ownership; it explores the subgroups’ attitudes regarding software laws; and finally, it explains the ethical positions embraced by each subgroup. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

Keywords: computer ethics; copyright; free software; intellectual property; software; open source advocate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10551-006-9215-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:73:y:2007:i:4:p:409-424

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-006-9215-1

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:73:y:2007:i:4:p:409-424