4 ms·

My question: Who wrote this software? Software engineers with 0 moral and ethical qualms or with an extreme incentive to get rich?

thejazzman 3y ago
Or heroes who simultaneously reported what they were hired to do Not saying they were -- but not a bad alternative to declining the work outright
- klausa 3y ago
  If they did, none of the moths-long reverse engineering would have been required.
  - brokenmachine 3y ago
    Ever heard of parallel construction?
    - p_l 3y ago
      Yes, it's "Technique not appearing in this episode", to paraphrase.
- brokenmachine 3y ago
  The heroes also wrote heroically bad date checking code.
- p_l 3y ago
  If they had reported things... well, it wouldn't take over a year to deal with this.
krisoft 3y ago
> Software engineers with 0 moral and ethical qualms I would like to challenge this. The ethical problem comes from this two facts: they had code which disabled the vehicle in certain conditions AND this was not communicated in the manuals/contracts. The two together is what is extremely dubious. If you implement a time based expiry system, and tell about it to the customers that I think is fair. The customer might of course opt to not buy the equipment under those terms, or only pay a significantly reduced fee, but that is just business. And it might be good business for both participants if everything is well documented and transparent, and these restrictions are reflected in the price, and everyone enters into the agreement with full knowledge and consent. Why does this matter: Look at it from the developer’s perspective. Imagine that they are told by their bosses that they need to implement technological measures to disable the product when the licence expires. Would developing that be unethical? I don’t think so. It becomes unethical at the later point when the train operator is not told about this. How much of that is in or out of the view of the developers is an other question. I’m not saying this is what happened. Clearly the gps based lockdown is not consistent with this story even under the most charitable interpretation. Something is fishy here and needs investigating. (The kind of investigation where the police with a warrant takes the repo and the communications of the company, and interviews everyone separately to figure out who did what and when, and who known what and when.) But while the overall conduct of the company appears to be unethical, it is not necessarily true that the software engineers in question were also unethical. It depends on what they did know, and what they were asked to deliver.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  > If you implement a time based expiry system, and tell about it to the customers that I think is fair. I remember a discussion of ethics on HN a few weeks or months back. I said there are actions that promote the common good, actions that do not affect the common good, and actions that harm the common good. I believe you view of "business" is in the category of harming the public good.
- _heimdall 3y ago
  They weren't selling software licenses here, they were selling a very real piece of hardware. It would be ethical to disable noncritical software updates under some time based constraints, its completely unreasonably to disable the use of the hardware all together. The customer bought it, that's their hardware to use however they wish. It would be completely unacceptable to me if an auto manufacturer baked in a time lock in a car I purchased. Heck, Apple got slapped for appearing to throttle performance based on age. Why is it reasonable for a train manufacturer to pull this stunt? To be clear, plausible deniability is also a big gray area when it comes to moral or ethical questions. It a timelock in the software seems unusual, engineers aren't off the hook simply because they didn't ask. If they did push back or ask for an explanation and were given false answers, sure they likely didn't do anything most would consider immoral. But if they just wrote the time lock because it was in a spec and didn't ask why a train should include a time bomb? Totally unethical in my book.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > They weren't selling software licenses here, they were selling a very real piece of hardware. I don’t know. I didn’t read the contract. Neither did you I suspect nor did the developers. Jet engines are leased by the hour. Yes they are very real pieces of hardware bolted to your airplane. That has nothing to do with the business model. Why can’t the same be true for trains? Even if I would know how trains are usually sold/purchased, which I don’t, I could be convinced by a boss that we are trying a different model. Why is this important? Two reasons: if your mental model is that these kind of things are done by “unethical developers” then you are not looking for the real culprits, and your interventions trying to prevent such things will be inefective.
Too 3y ago
Outsource to the cheapest bidder. You know the type, that without question mechanically implements exactly what is written in the specification, no matter how wrong it is, technically or morally. If you are lucky that is, and not only get back a steaming pile of bugs. The bugs in the date checking hints this wasn’t written by the sharpest guy in the room, unless it was deliberately made confusing, to not be easily pattern detected.
xnzakg 3y ago
I like how these arguments always seem to imply that the software engineers are the ones who have to care way more about morals and ethics than whoever came up with the morally questionable "feature" to implement.
- vimax 3y ago
  The alternative is that software engineers are resolved of responsibility for only following orders. Also, I don't understand why so many software engineers are willing to write code that is clearly adverse to users so their managers can get their performance bonuses. What's the upside? Narrowly escape the next round of layoffs so you can do it all over again? The tech companies are not our friends any more than they are the users friends, they collude against us and treat us as disposable. This will continue as long as engineers do not take a stand.
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    > I don't understand why so many software engineers are willing to write code that is clearly adverse to users so their managers can get their performance bonuses. In my experience, the young engineer is hired and bets his/her career on this one position, then they are told to do the dirty work or leave. That's why I resigned from my first software engineering job.
    - vimax 3y ago
      You might be right, and thank you for doing that. I remember hearing that the number of software engineers doubles every 5 years, meaning that most software engineers will always have less than 5 years of experience. I think it was Bob Martin.
stbenjam 3y ago
Nobody frames it as an evil thing. It’s spun to sound good the engineers don’t put any critical thought into it.

thejazzman 3y ago

Or heroes who simultaneously reported what they were hired to do Not saying they were -- but not a bad alternative to declining the work outright

klausa 3y ago
If they did, none of the moths-long reverse engineering would have been required.
- brokenmachine 3y ago
  Ever heard of parallel construction?
  - p_l 3y ago
    Yes, it's "Technique not appearing in this episode", to paraphrase.
brokenmachine 3y ago
The heroes also wrote heroically bad date checking code.
p_l 3y ago
If they had reported things... well, it wouldn't take over a year to deal with this.

krisoft 3y ago

> Software engineers with 0 moral and ethical qualms I would like to challenge this. The ethical problem comes from this two facts: they had code which disabled the vehicle in certain conditions AND this was not communicated in the manuals/contracts. The two together is what is extremely dubious. If you implement a time based expiry system, and tell about it to the customers that I think is fair. The customer might of course opt to not buy the equipment under those terms, or only pay a significantly reduced fee, but that is just business. And it might be good business for both participants if everything is well documented and transparent, and these restrictions are reflected in the price, and everyone enters into the agreement with full knowledge and consent. Why does this matter: Look at it from the developer’s perspective. Imagine that they are told by their bosses that they need to implement technological measures to disable the product when the licence expires. Would developing that be unethical? I don’t think so. It becomes unethical at the later point when the train operator is not told about this. How much of that is in or out of the view of the developers is an other question. I’m not saying this is what happened. Clearly the gps based lockdown is not consistent with this story even under the most charitable interpretation. Something is fishy here and needs investigating. (The kind of investigation where the police with a warrant takes the repo and the communications of the company, and interviews everyone separately to figure out who did what and when, and who known what and when.) But while the overall conduct of the company appears to be unethical, it is not necessarily true that the software engineers in question were also unethical. It depends on what they did know, and what they were asked to deliver.

RecycledEle 3y ago
> If you implement a time based expiry system, and tell about it to the customers that I think is fair. I remember a discussion of ethics on HN a few weeks or months back. I said there are actions that promote the common good, actions that do not affect the common good, and actions that harm the common good. I believe you view of "business" is in the category of harming the public good.
_heimdall 3y ago
They weren't selling software licenses here, they were selling a very real piece of hardware. It would be ethical to disable noncritical software updates under some time based constraints, its completely unreasonably to disable the use of the hardware all together. The customer bought it, that's their hardware to use however they wish. It would be completely unacceptable to me if an auto manufacturer baked in a time lock in a car I purchased. Heck, Apple got slapped for appearing to throttle performance based on age. Why is it reasonable for a train manufacturer to pull this stunt? To be clear, plausible deniability is also a big gray area when it comes to moral or ethical questions. It a timelock in the software seems unusual, engineers aren't off the hook simply because they didn't ask. If they did push back or ask for an explanation and were given false answers, sure they likely didn't do anything most would consider immoral. But if they just wrote the time lock because it was in a spec and didn't ask why a train should include a time bomb? Totally unethical in my book.
- krisoft 3y ago
  > They weren't selling software licenses here, they were selling a very real piece of hardware. I don’t know. I didn’t read the contract. Neither did you I suspect nor did the developers. Jet engines are leased by the hour. Yes they are very real pieces of hardware bolted to your airplane. That has nothing to do with the business model. Why can’t the same be true for trains? Even if I would know how trains are usually sold/purchased, which I don’t, I could be convinced by a boss that we are trying a different model. Why is this important? Two reasons: if your mental model is that these kind of things are done by “unethical developers” then you are not looking for the real culprits, and your interventions trying to prevent such things will be inefective.

Too 3y ago

Outsource to the cheapest bidder. You know the type, that without question mechanically implements exactly what is written in the specification, no matter how wrong it is, technically or morally. If you are lucky that is, and not only get back a steaming pile of bugs. The bugs in the date checking hints this wasn’t written by the sharpest guy in the room, unless it was deliberately made confusing, to not be easily pattern detected.

xnzakg 3y ago

I like how these arguments always seem to imply that the software engineers are the ones who have to care way more about morals and ethics than whoever came up with the morally questionable "feature" to implement.

vimax 3y ago
The alternative is that software engineers are resolved of responsibility for only following orders. Also, I don't understand why so many software engineers are willing to write code that is clearly adverse to users so their managers can get their performance bonuses. What's the upside? Narrowly escape the next round of layoffs so you can do it all over again? The tech companies are not our friends any more than they are the users friends, they collude against us and treat us as disposable. This will continue as long as engineers do not take a stand.
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  > I don't understand why so many software engineers are willing to write code that is clearly adverse to users so their managers can get their performance bonuses. In my experience, the young engineer is hired and bets his/her career on this one position, then they are told to do the dirty work or leave. That's why I resigned from my first software engineering job.
  - vimax 3y ago
    You might be right, and thank you for doing that. I remember hearing that the number of software engineers doubles every 5 years, meaning that most software engineers will always have less than 5 years of experience. I think it was Bob Martin.

stbenjam 3y ago

Nobody frames it as an evil thing. It’s spun to sound good the engineers don’t put any critical thought into it.