4 ms·

> if the company is sued because of a bug you caused, we're suing you It's totally implausible that companies are going to start regularly suing their engineer

> if the company is sued because of a bug you caused, we're suing you It's totally implausible that companies are going to start regularly suing their engineers personally for writing bugs. They'd recover very little money and make it impossible to hire. Programmers already write bugs that create liability in businesses all over the world every day. Worry about something else.

Jach 9y ago
Probably so, but an indemnification/hold-harmless agreement becomes a much more important part of the contract negotiation and individuals and businesses have to pay a lot closer attention when so far everyone's been happy enough with the "don't sue me, this software has no warranty" clause we slap on just about all our software, open or proprietary. If that is ever threatened, do you think a professional liability insurance industry won't pop up and become effectively mandatory even if you're just building a CRUD app? Now each company's gotta pay up. And you would have to pay for your own individual coverage too if you don't plan to work for the same big company your whole career like classical engineers often do, or don't want the risk of a company laying you off and then hiring you back as an independent contractor as is happening to some electrical engineers. > Worry about something else. Oh this is a very long way down my list of worries. But programmers should look very carefully at all the drawbacks of professional engineering before trying to shape software engineering into it, which is what regulation on something so domain cross cutting as data is doing. The fallout of GDPR will be interesting to watch. With the potential fines being in the millions, have any insurance companies appeared yet to offer insurance for US companies wanting to do business in the EU but not wanting to spend the time and money making sure they're fully compliant with each rule?
- voidmain 9y ago
  I'm not sure I think it would be a bad thing if proprietary software licenses stopped disclaiming all liability, but there's no evidence that creating liability for data breaches (for the entity that collected and stored the data, not whoever wrote the software they used to do it!) is going to change that. Plenty of companies already use software in ways that creates liability for them, and yet as you say shrink wrap software rarely comes with any warranty. Individual liability seems much less likely to me, in the absence of statues explicitly forcing this liability onto individuals. If you are a consultant, and the market equilibrium actually shifts so that customers are demanding security warranties, your insurance costs would go up, but unless you are less competent than average your equilibrium income should go up to match. The legal incidence, and plausibly the economic incidence, is all on companies that actually handle personal data.

Jach 9y ago

Probably so, but an indemnification/hold-harmless agreement becomes a much more important part of the contract negotiation and individuals and businesses have to pay a lot closer attention when so far everyone's been happy enough with the "don't sue me, this software has no warranty" clause we slap on just about all our software, open or proprietary. If that is ever threatened, do you think a professional liability insurance industry won't pop up and become effectively mandatory even if you're just building a CRUD app? Now each company's gotta pay up. And you would have to pay for your own individual coverage too if you don't plan to work for the same big company your whole career like classical engineers often do, or don't want the risk of a company laying you off and then hiring you back as an independent contractor as is happening to some electrical engineers. > Worry about something else. Oh this is a very long way down my list of worries. But programmers should look very carefully at all the drawbacks of professional engineering before trying to shape software engineering into it, which is what regulation on something so domain cross cutting as data is doing. The fallout of GDPR will be interesting to watch. With the potential fines being in the millions, have any insurance companies appeared yet to offer insurance for US companies wanting to do business in the EU but not wanting to spend the time and money making sure they're fully compliant with each rule?

voidmain 9y ago
I'm not sure I think it would be a bad thing if proprietary software licenses stopped disclaiming all liability, but there's no evidence that creating liability for data breaches (for the entity that collected and stored the data, not whoever wrote the software they used to do it!) is going to change that. Plenty of companies already use software in ways that creates liability for them, and yet as you say shrink wrap software rarely comes with any warranty. Individual liability seems much less likely to me, in the absence of statues explicitly forcing this liability onto individuals. If you are a consultant, and the market equilibrium actually shifts so that customers are demanding security warranties, your insurance costs would go up, but unless you are less competent than average your equilibrium income should go up to match. The legal incidence, and plausibly the economic incidence, is all on companies that actually handle personal data.