Yeah I agree. There's no "right" or "wrong" way to play as far as I am concerned.
To clarify I play without any 3rd party crowd sourced tools exclusively in Open, if there was an active Ironman mode then I would play that! So play as you want completely! I am an Elitist though so to have respect, I would not switch modes at all as I explained above. The OP has already said that they don't give a fig about what I think and that amused me in a thread about etiquette.
Again apologies if the impression anyone has is not "wry humour". Imagine all my post spoken in a cut glass accent.
For those of you who need distracting from work or who have time to kill I heartily recommend reading this
http://www.sirlin.net/ptw - it's a free online book about using all means necessary to win and not having hangups about using any game tools to do so.
The tl;dr version is - anything permitted by the game or engine is a fair tactic, so in Elite Dangerous terms:-
- switching from Solo -> Open is fine
- ramming as a combat tactic is fine
- killing for no reason is fine
What wouldn't be OK:-
-hacks (defined as changing game files to gain an advantage - so a 3rd party tool is OK as it just reads the files, but infinite shields is not)
-combat logging or cheating in another way (so trade beacon trading has been confirmed as an exploit, as has combat logging)
Playing in Open means that you accept that some people may adhere to this doctrine, and that is all tickety boo as I have said, and good luck to all CMDRs who do.
What makes it exciting for me is knowing that I have some self imposed rules (as the aforementioned non-crowd sourced 3rd party tools and Open only) competing against players who don't.
Which as an elitist person means I can look down on people who don't play by the same, self imposed rules & hence the respect comment. Further and quite rightly, the OP can say they don't care about what I think or do.
Play your own way.
To bring this back to the OP's question about etiquette, well we already have some fine answers here, and I think the final answer must be - "Play within the boundaries of the game, the only constraints and etiquette are those you place on yourself"
Good Hunting CMDRs!
p.s. yes reading back I could have worded it better - I hope this explanation is better!