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Software Product Liability?
ben writes "Reuters just ran a story about the increasing number of calls for liability on the part of software developers, with a not-too-suprising focus on Microsoft and its uber-fallible IIS webserver. Given that many other engineering disciplines have some sort of accreditation and licensing body to enforce codes of professional ethics, I'm curious what impact the demand for such a creature in the software industry could have on Open Source developers, especially the part-time hobbyist ones. That is, establishment of some sort of Software Developer's license means the developer is potentially liable for whatever havoc his bugs may wreak, and traditionally the only environment with legal resources adequate to deal with such liability has been the megalithic corporate one."
I always point to the ham radio market. In general, there are very few pieces of "bad" ham radio gear sold. Some may be better than others, but none are truly bad. Why? I believe it is because the FCC requires that one understand the gear before they can get a license and use it.
Computer consumers, in contrast, often understand practically nothing about what they are purchasing. They do not understand how software (or hardware) works, how it is designed, what it is reasonable to expect a computer to do and what it is not. As a result, there are marketing droids demanding that people be able to cut & paste from video editing software to word processing documents. This leads to the software engineering team spending an inordinate amount of time creating bloatware with as many bugs as features. Adding to this problem are the EULAs that software vendors use to shield themselves from any product liability lawsuits ("it's not a product, it's just a license to use the software"), thus undermining the only thing that had any possibility of keeping the software quality in check.
If licensing improved the quality of software, then MCSEs would be turning out works of art. And I think that we can all agree that it's not happening.
6) You can't count.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!