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I think software industry is slowly headed this way: that there will come a point when you cannot let a member of the public use something based on your code wi
by Andys 16y ago
I think software industry is slowly headed this way: that there will come a point when you cannot let a member of the public use something based on your code without you being a licensed SE.
- amh 16y agoI think the uncertainties inherent in writing software that depends on many other complex libraries/frameworks will tend to discourage strong liability for bugs. The average Win32 program or Java web app has a dizzying list of dependencies and it would be impossible for the programmer sitting on top of that software stack to make any guarantees about the stuff underneath. In certain highly restricted domains (typically embedded systems), liability for bugs becomes somewhat more realistic.
- gloob 16y agoThe average Win32 program or Java web app has a dizzying list of dependencies and it would be impossible for the programmer sitting on top of that software stack to make any guarantees about the stuff underneath. That, divorced from further arguments, is not an extraordinarily strong argument against liability for defects. After all: the engineer who builds upon such a stack has presumably, more or less consciously, made the decision that defects are acceptable - otherwise they would have chosen something less complex. Is there any particular reason someone should not be held accountable for that decision?
- jbri 16y agoThe question is, would we expect authors of libraries to indemnify other developers against liability if the fault is in the library itself?
- jarek 16y agoIf it's life critical software, then yes. You don't get to blame civil engineers for structure failure if the steel provided had material faults (that couldn't be detected by said engineers exercising due diligence).
- j_baker 16y agoYes. The fact that more than likely it was their PHB who made the decision, not them.
- jarek 16y agoThat just shifts the responsibility onto whoever made the decision after being presented with an accurate assessment, PHB or not.
- billswift 16y agoMicrosoft, for one, has been pushing for that for over a decade. I read Steve McConnell's After the Gold Rush: Creating a True Profession of Software Engineering, a few years ago and had read articles in several print magazines, I'm pretty sure Dr Dobb's had several, in the late 1990s.