3 ms·

Seeing the regulation and accountability hammers falling upon us sure is scary. But. Isn’t it past time we actually get accountable for our work? Isn’t it pas

Seeing the regulation and accountability hammers falling upon us sure is scary. But. Isn’t it past time we actually get accountable for our work? Isn’t it past time we provide some form of guarantee of merchantability and suitability for some purpose? Sure amateur work should not be forbidden. But come on, when we sell something for profit, we should be accountable when it falls short of its promises. I don’t know how to best handle it. I’m even pretty sure some unintended consequences are inevitable (though they can probably be minimised). Still, do we really want to keep the status quo, where we can sell insecure software and never be liable for this? Most other industries are liable already, why wouldn’t we? One thing’s for sure: voting with our wallets clearly isn’t enough. One way or another our market needs a little reshaping.

paulryanrogers 3y ago
Most tech is heavily dependent on other tech, and networks are often only best effort. So I'd agree industrial, auto, and medical software should have some more regulation around safety and security; but not all commercial work.
- john_the_writer 3y ago
  Imagine CI/CD with a gov body in there. Deploy once a year.
  - staunton 3y ago
    More like "deploy once ever, maybe"
- loup-vaillant 3y ago
  Agreed. It’s not just about the amount of regulation though. The kind of regulation is important too. Take 3 random examples: Single player game: maybe we want to cut back on the skinner boxes, or automatically mark 18+ any actual gambling. Professional accounting: maybe we want the thing to be error-free under normal operating conditions (good luck defining "normal" here though). Media player: that thing routinely reads stuff from the Internet, maybe it should be robust to hostile input.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
> Isn’t it past time we actually get accountable for our work? This is true in almost every industry, especially medicine. There is no accountability. It's a myth like the fairy godmother, etc.

paulryanrogers 3y ago

Most tech is heavily dependent on other tech, and networks are often only best effort. So I'd agree industrial, auto, and medical software should have some more regulation around safety and security; but not all commercial work.

john_the_writer 3y ago
Imagine CI/CD with a gov body in there. Deploy once a year.
- staunton 3y ago
  More like "deploy once ever, maybe"
loup-vaillant 3y ago
Agreed. It’s not just about the amount of regulation though. The kind of regulation is important too. Take 3 random examples: Single player game: maybe we want to cut back on the skinner boxes, or automatically mark 18+ any actual gambling. Professional accounting: maybe we want the thing to be error-free under normal operating conditions (good luck defining "normal" here though). Media player: that thing routinely reads stuff from the Internet, maybe it should be robust to hostile input.

P_I_Staker 3y ago

> Isn’t it past time we actually get accountable for our work? This is true in almost every industry, especially medicine. There is no accountability. It's a myth like the fairy godmother, etc.