Money and focus to improve SE culture can come from just changing civil liability doctrines, instead of gov’t regulation. For example, guilty-until-proven-inno

Money and focus to improve SE culture can come from just changing civil liability doctrines, instead of gov’t regulation. For example, guilty-until-proven-innocent (res ipsa loquitur) would make poor IT design and operations a lot more expensive, at the expense of a lot more court cases and a chilling effect on new software. For mature core operations, the price paid by society might be worth it. The IT industry would then be forced to come together and address issues at an industry level, if for no other reason than every player avoiding painful amounts of time and money spent in the civil justice system…which is a lot less fun than even the most torturous code reviews. My sense is (IANAL) that the liability doctrines for software are stuck in the 1960s with all software viewed as a “best effort” sort of experimental exercise that must be protected from the rigors of normal liability. I think we are past that point for a lot of software components. But who in the software industry dare acknowledge it?