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Lets say I wrote an anonymizing messaging program, and horribly repressive Country X deemed it illegal. As long as innocent people weren't targeted I would have no problem with that.
Now, same situation, this time it's Country X using the software to infiltrate groups that are trying to highlight crimes that Country X is committing, and the software hides their agents sufficiently that sometimes people are caught, charged and executed. I do have a problem with that. This is the problem with binary option questions. Dividing it up into legal but unethical or illegal but ethical subdivisions still leaves the situation in question way too simplistic. There are billions of nuances that could shade this one way or the other, and some of them aren't very black and white.
I don't say much, but I don't say it very well.
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Many years ago, before computers took over all control of military weapons, one of my relatives was a soldier in the Norwegian army. Having an engineering background, he was set to calculate the aiming of the mortars. Gradually it occurred to him that if he made an error in his calculations, that might lead to a number of people not being killed, but allowed to continue their lives. The better he was at doing his job without errors, the more people would die.
He had a mental brekdown from this, and left the military service.
I have always been a CO, refusing the mandatory one year military training, so as a "punishment" I had to spend 16 months working in a public serivce institution - in my case: A large research institute. (That was like post-education job training for me!) This research institue also did military defence related work, and I made it quite clear that I would refuse to participate in any of those projects. As a CO, I would not want to read in the newspapers several years later that a successful bombing had killed one suspected terrorists and twenty civilians, knowing that I had been involved in the project making the software for controlling that bomb. If I hadn't been a good programmer, but made some mistake, maybe those twenty civilians would still have been alive.
Such a situation might or might not occur. My relative with the mortar was never in battle; he never killed (or failed to kill) anyone. But the mere possiblity that your errors could give humans the right to continue their lives, the fewer errors you do, the less right to life - that is too much of a responsibility for me. The responsibilty to kill as many humans as possible.
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So I am pretty sure it was being used for (what I would probably consider) unethical and immoral purposes. However I did not have enough knowledge of the way the software applied to the man on the street to judge.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Is this pure coincidence, or was this story from a few weeks ago; an inspiration for the question at hand?Seth Vargo removed a tool used by customers of his former employer, Chef. The company quickly restored it, because the software is open source.
Director of Transmogrification Services
Shinobi of Query Language
Master of Yoda Conditional
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Given that most of us (even the self-employed) have very little to no control over how our software is used, I would say that the only way to be certain that our software is not used for illegal, immoral, or unethical purposes is not to write it in the first place. This would shut down our industry immediately.
The question is - what (legal, moral, ethical) liability does a toolmaker have? For example, a steak knife may be used to cut steak, or to cut a person. Does that make the manufacturer of the knife responsible for a murder committed with a knife of his manufacture? Obviously, not.
IMO, as long as a tool has a legitimate, legal, moral, and ethical use - manufacturing and selling it is not unethical, even if we know that some people will use it for illegal, immoral, or unethical purposes.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Of course.
however, the Poll states "Are you Ok...". The poll just wanted to know if people were alright (feelings, not action), with their software being used by hackers, political hate crimes, and sexual perverts around the world.
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I have no control over the people who use my software, saints or sinners. I therefore see no reason to waste time worrying about it.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I have an idea, I don't know if is ok  ... What would be a straw poll about third part library which cause more problems ? Or which are they the most reliable of them ? Whenever I stayed inside a mature framework/library (ex. MFC) everything go smoothly ... but soon as I included third part library / framework, the problem begins ... and not because of their code, but sometime due to their support.
I could give some example here of reliable: OpenCV, VTK.
Some not so reliable: tesseract, DICOM, former versions of VTK.
If you think that is not so good idea, please be patience
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See in the upper right corner... "Suggest a survey" (left of the "Follow" widget)
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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First... I don't write software that transcendental, but if I did...
I would not care any little if it was used for some "officially declared illegal, unethical or immoral" purposes, because as others stated, that depends a lot on the local circumstances. Example below of the VPN or a new encryption algorithm used by people trying to change things in a dictatorship "custom democratic" country
But it would piss me the hell off, if my software was used for activities against the current people as the usual scam-waves, ransomware (i.e. that very same new Encryption algorithm named above), hacking private people just for profit, taking down the IT of a hospital, hiding the communications of a child pornography group (i.e. the same VPN named above)...
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 16-Oct-19 3:00am.
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Well said. "illegal, immoral, or unethical " is just too broad of a spectrum to consider any non superficial answer. If the question was about activities that you - the author - find immoral, it would be more straight forward.
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Now that the survey has been revised, I answered "I'm not OK...", which is true for things that I consider immoral or unethical. But there are illegal things that I consider to be neither immoral nor unethical, and I'd be OK with it being used for those.
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What are we talking about here? LibreOffice? InternetExplorer? Solitaire? Paint? Peggle?
My software is an aid to charting crochet patterns. I know that you can crochet hyperbolic shapes, but is that immoral? It is not illegal, yet. But maybe someone could smuggle the crocheted shapes into a math exam. Is that unethical?
Maybe "Irrelevant" should have been one of the available answers.
Joan F Silverston
jsilverston@cox.net
nhswinc.com
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I see your point, the software I write is not that transcendent... but there are some/many things here in CP that could be used for bad although it was not originally thought for that.
I.E.:
A new encryption algorithm can be used to protect your private data or to blackmailing people with ransomware
A VPN tool can be used to try to contact the outer world safely in a dictatorship or to hide traffic of a child pornography group
There might be huge differences... at least, this is how I understand the meaning of the poll
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Any app can be used for any purpose, you develop a very basic camera, someone uses it to spy on a teenager for nefarious purposes.
You write a peer-to-peer data sharing app, someone hosts it to retrieve data of users, copy it or something.
I know of a few cases, when a software issue in a mobile of a person caused them to be blackmailed by the person who was going to fix it—as he got access to their personal media.
Who to blame? I guess, it is the person who is using the software for such purposes, not the actual human who wrote it rather for general purposes—writing a software for illegal activities is a totally different scenario, and I highly condemn such acts.
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan wrote: Who to blame? I guess, it is the person who is using the software for such purposes, not the actual human who wrote it rather for general purposes
I don't think the survey implies anything different. 
/ravi
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Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan wrote: Any app can be used for any purpose
Do you mean that "Minesweeper" can actually be used to sweep mines??? 
Anything that is unrelated to elephants is irrelephant
Anonymous
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The problem with quotes on the internet is that you can never tell if they're genuine
Winston Churchill, 1944
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Never argue with a fool. Onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.
Mark Twain
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Illegal where? China does everything it can to throttle free speech. They use facial recognition software to identify and arrest political dissidents. They use border firewalls to control the network based on political and philosophical content. These are legal applications. In the western world, I'm pretty sure these would all be illegal.
Immoral? See above.
Unethical? In what context?
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity."
- Hanlon's Razor
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I'm not okay with people acting immorally or unethically with or without my software.
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Constructs human-behavior Karnaugh map... reduces and simplifies...
OK. So you're okay with people acting morally and ethically? 
Software Zen: delete this;
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Legality and Morality can change dramatically over time, so what I object to today I might be applauding next week.
~A
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So 1 is easy. Legality is something defined by the state/government that you participate in.
- (what I consider) unethical - is this a contradiction.
Ethics is external standards of morality. Thus the "What I consider" is counter.
then 3. is thrown in. 3. (what I consider) immoral
- well yeah, morals are internal, self, principles.
So???
1. Yes - there are SOME illegal activities (not all governments are created equal) things I do not mind software that I have written be used for.
- used for "unethical" activities?
- Yes, again SOME activities which I do not find morally wrong, well others would find wrong.
- immoral activites?
- I am not sure how to answer this. If I would find the activity immoral, then I should also want it not done ? question mark ? But to impose my morality onto others is immoral, for me, so they can use it?
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Most (if not all) African dictators will switch off (block) the internet during or immediately after rigged elections and they will say its a legal order (they might actually even secure a court order), so if i use a VPN application to find my way around the blockade, will the VPN developer not be OK with my action or they will be proud of their work?
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Exactly. What constitutes an illegal action isn't always an immoral one.
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I currently work for a large financial company. And I'm OK with that.
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