Sadly, what will probably happen is that eventually some court will throw out one case of the "we aren't responsible" weasel words that appear in every sofware license. Then the lawyers will get a lot of money thrown at them in a very disruptive process that will cause a lot of damage but will eventually lead to more reliable software.

A better alternative would be to encourage the professional organization of "software engineers" like other types of engineers that have to be licensed/accredited and are recognized as being required to keep abreast of and adhere to the current best practices in order to ensure reliability, security, and safety. Then encourage government contracts to require a licensed/accredited software engineer be assigned to and responsible for the project. Then managers can try to tell the engineer to cut corners but the engineer knows (as does the manager) that bowing to such pressure risks the engineer losing his license and thus having to work as an "ordinary" programmer at a lower pay.

Then more and more industries that use software in important places will require licensed software engineers supervise and approve the software.

And then all manner of consumers of software (from individuals to huge companies) will have the option of paying extra for the software with the "Engineered for quality" emblem on the box, a registered trademark of some software engineering accreditation umbrella group.

And the market can determine what software warrants the extra reliability, safety, etc. and at what price.

Making this type of change primarilly through lawyers or government regulation is going to be much more painful and much less effective (as has been shown over and over again).

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")

In reply to (tye)Re: OT: Software & Liability by tye
in thread OT: Software & Liability by cjf

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