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No, of course they're not. Just like the scientists that developed morphine aren't responsible for a doctor later using it to kill a patient.
by jon-wood 6y ago
No, of course they're not. Just like the scientists that developed morphine aren't responsible for a doctor later using it to kill a patient.
- ryandrake 6y agoSure, same as the LLVM example someone else pointed out. Good points. I’ll qualify my opinion then. To the extent that the engineer can know the ultimate application of their work, he or she should be responsible for ensuring it is being used ethically. So, the engineer writing a binary search, knowingly working on “Project Orbital Death Ray” or “Voter Suppression 2.1” should know better. I hope we can at least agree on that one. The engineer writing a linked list or moving around Protobufs for their some open source toolset gets a pass because their project as they understand it is ethically neutral. BUT there will be that engineer who then takes those tools and integrates it into “Project Orbital Death Ray”. That’s maybe where accountability should begin. Everyone’s talking about the managers taking the blame and yes they’re culpable too. But at the end of the day an actual software developer’s fingers type the code in. If that developer knows what he is working on, he needs to bear the responsibility, too.