[mrfredward]

The dictionary defines ethics as the field of knowledge dealing with moral principles, sure, and that's not at all what I'm talking about here. Perhaps I erred in using the word too generally and should have been specific in talking about ethics in the professional sense.

The ethical codes that are associated with a profession are different from moral principles that may usually guide us. The first example they gave when I studied this in engineering was that of a defense attorney: trying to help a guilty person get away with a serious crime violates most people's moral standards, but the code of ethics for attorneys demands that they defend guilty people anyway, because our law system is set up with that expectation.

To my original point, someone may claim a moral imperative to tell the world about the company in this article, but the fact of the matter is just about every professional ethics committee or handbook would tell you to uphold your NDA in the situation here. Wasting people's time under false pretenses may be bad, and it isn't ethical to do it yourself, but it isn't so bad that you can just drop your own obligations and blog about it.

And yes I admit some handwaving here since programming doesn't have widely adopted ethical codes yet, but I can guarantee that when they do exist, they won't tell you to violate a contract for something that won't injure anyone and doesn't break any laws.

[throwaway1459]

I think the defense attorney example seems to be a bit of an exception. Even in that scenario, the law also requires a prosecutor. The partiality of each opposing side is required for the system itself to be impartial, and if the defense attorney has a sense of ethics, they will only participate if they know that someone else is arguing the prosecution's side as well (or if they're about to run out of food and have no other alternatives, but that's a different story).

Re moral imperatives and tradeoffs: even these guys had a code of ethics https://www.bullmarketgifts.com/Framed-Enron-Code-of-Ethics-... The "ethical thing to do" does not always come from a book or a committee, instead it's dictated by the moral principle most specific to the situation at hand and taking into consideration the widest breadth of weighted personal interests and needs. In any case, I'm not sure I agree with this statement "just about every professional ethics committee or handbook would tell you to uphold your NDA". Nor do I believe that I can speak for just about every committee without consulting them beforehand, so I can't know what they would come up with in this situation.

In the end, I just fail to see why ethics in the professional world should receive special treatment. Different domain, same principles and rules.