11–14 of 14 posts
Given the evident political power granted by technology, I can see (a somewhat sinister) argument for restricting access to technical knowledge and capabilities. Perhaps a government license required to use a compiler or interpreter? A professional body to restrict access to the profession and bump up salaries for programmers? (And also control them at the same time). Programmers would become a lot like lawyers - pri…
I don't think "programmer" is a well-defined enough concept to be associated with an oath. You can't go around calling yourself a Medical Doctor or an Engineer if you aren't, but pretty much anybody who codes at all can reasonably call themselves a programmer.
Even with all that aside, such oaths only really work for things like causing blatant harm. Unqualified "freedom" and "liberty" (especially in the USA) are so nebulous they mean almost nothing at all. The overwhelming majority of programmers work for organisations whose goals (e.g. profit, power) are not - and are often directly opposed to - "freedom" by any reasonable definition.
In short, I don't think the answer to your question is "no, there shouldn't" so much as "no, there couldn't".