Very nice write up. And i agree with most of what you wrote.
I would like to add this. There are cases where interfering would help, and it would produce a best outcome. But, the problem is that it could go extremely badly as well. Do you risk and try to help, or just do nothing?
Its also a problem in todays courts. Are the people who dont intervene when they witness a crime criminals or are they in the right? This may be easier to answer and argue. But when you deal with a completely different species and culture, who is to say that your morals are correct? Who is to say that they would even want your help?
You could literaly play god for these people as we see in few episode of TNG and even Orville. I think PD is there to ease the decision for captains. To relieve them of the moral choice. PD is a precaution, its not always the correct decision, but objectively the best general rule there could be.
Nobody wants the moral problem equvivalent to the trolley problem. Prime Directive offers a way out for captains, to transfer the resposibility. It may not be perfect, but its best considering.
Interesting read, although a bit too preachy at times.
In my opinion, this is a utopian point of view that does not work in real life and glances over a lot of good things of GPL.
Linux and a lot of open source would not be here today, in this shape, without big companies using it for their commercialized software. You really think Microsoft would contribute to Linux source code if it can not use it commercially? You really think ANY company would contribute to ANYTHING if they can not commercialize it?
Linux is what it is today because not only volunteers, but companies depend on it being stable and feature-full. If companies did not care to contribute to it, it would be dead and only a pet project of few volunteers.
Who would pay all these people to work on it? Sure, some of them would work for free as a hobby, some of them coud get paid from donations. But its nowhere near enough to make Linux or any other FOSS project big and popular.
Until people need money to survive, AGPL will never be the most popular license and it should not if you want to have FOSS.
And what is so bad about it? You still have base open source code that they use to make their software, make your own. You are mad because companies take open source code, and charge for it. Then, you take it and make the software free.
You want everybody to use FOSS, sure. Who will be customer support? Who will fix and be responsible for stuff when they dont work? How will you pay these people?
Free as in, free to do whatever the fuck you want with it. Not free as in free to do whatever you want, except make money to survive.