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Calling Software Reliability Into Question
phillymjs writes "CNN is running a story on software reliability, and how the lack of it may cost more and more lives as technology creeps further into everyday products. It appears a debate is finally starting amongst everyday (read: non-geek) people about vendor liability for buggy software. Some opponents of the liability push are unsurprising: Says the story, 'Microsoft contends that setting [reliability] standards could stifle innovation, and the cost of litigation and damages could mean more expensive software.' The article also says, however, that consumers' favortism of flashy products over reliable ones is partly to blame for the current state of software."
...could reliability standards stifle innovation? How hard is it to design something that works well and is extremely robust, yet, be creative and innovative in its design?
The trouble is, the more accustomed users become to bugs, the harder it is to get them reported and fixed. If my computer crashes, I just reset it and get back to work. I don't bother to investigate what caused the bug, to try to reproduce it, to contact the vendor (hah!) and try to work out the problem. Crashes occur much too frequently for that.
OTOH, if computers were reliable enough to crash only once every few years, then users might report every crash that happens, the vendor can diagnose it, and fix the bug or family-of-bugs so that it never happens again. This is roughly what happens when a mainframe crashes, I believe - it's a big event.
Imagine if when your microwave crashed, you could call some hotline, they would come and replace the microwave and take away the old one for analysis. Instead, even on complex software systems the standard first resort for the help line is 'reboot and see if it goes away'.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Remember, one thing M$ does well is pay lawyers.
IMO if a company is unwilling to supply you with the source code (under whatever license) to let you see and fix problems that exist they should have no possible exemption from litigation, no matter what POS EULA they persuade you to sign.
They are asking you to place your trust in them that their code is good enough to bet your business on. If their software is not all it's cracked up to be and you had no chance to check their claims (but instead had to take their word for it) then they clearly are responsible for breaking their word.
Unless they told you that it was a buggy product that you couldn't rely on in the first place... now that would make for amusing adverts.
(Can you imagine Windows boxes with cigarette-health-warning style labels on them saying "The Computer-General warns that this product may be bad for your business.")
Beep beep.
The company with the most to gain from this (with its unique cash reserve - Microsoft) is the company most in opposition...
Yes, I said it. I'll say it again. Microsoft could gain *alot* from this movement.
With their resources, they are the ones that could easily afford a true source-code audit the likes of which the BSDs are only beginning to approach.
They could build an operating system that fully, completely, and truly matches the concept of "secure by default" and they have the resources, manpower, and ability to do so.
But, instead, they oppose it. Building a secure system is against corporate culture, so they won't do it.
Thanks xBSD!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Isn't the trend towards "flashy products" rather than reliable ones the same reason why current marketing pushes sex rather than product qualities (Pepsi, A&F, etc), movies flaunt big-name actors and actresses, and people won't go see a movie unless it has a high PG-13 or R rating (PG? It's got to be boring). This is the same reason why Legos now has 3-piece dumptrucks and 8-piece Hogwarts castles. Why is this? Dumbed-down education? Why is it that people have just started to gobble up whatever the media tells them rather than understanding what they need for themselves. *sigh* What's society coming to?
I've often thought about how many products use simple programs and stuff to run correctly...like traffic light systems...right now they work pretty well and everything goes together properly. However, the day that cities decide to have a central server run the traffic lights so they can...say, control traffic around accident areas...things will go wrong. The "foolproof" software will cause all sorts of problems.
I don't see this so much as software causing problems as much as the tendency we have to make what used to be simple things really complicated. One example I have in my life is a train system that runs around inside a building by the ceiling at a camp I work at. The system looks really nice..and it could work well. However, having a couple of electrical engineers volunteer their time to make the system made it very different. Now, what could have been a simple on off switch is a whole panel with an LCD display and all sorts of error lights and little IR detectors on the track to make sure the train is in the right place. It is a geek paradise...but the train NEVER works. Despite all the fancy assembly code they have running the whole thing, it doesn't work. An on/off switch would have worked..I'm certain of it!
As we complicate more and more appliances with complex software, there are going to be more problems. Heck..what's gonna happen next time your toaster oven timer crashes...you could burn down a house!
The caveman had something going for them...
The anti-salmon
And Bill Gates turns to the CEO of GM Motors and says, 'Why is your technology moving so slowly? If you advanced at the same rate as we do, we would have flying cars by now!' Immediatly the CEO of GM turnes to Billy and says, 'Because the government doesn't allow us to build cars that crash 4 times a day.'
Moreover, how innovative has MS (or anyone else) been about reliability? Adding new features like embedding full-length motion pictures into Word documents (apologies to Neal Stephenson) is one kind of 'innovation,' but it comes at the cost of gains in stability. One could argue, and people have, that most commercial software is derivative anyhow, and its mass adoption has stifled opportunities to create more stable products.
And finally, do we really need that many new twists on things? I'm not saying stop research or trying new things, but mainframes running COBOL code have been hosting most of the world's financial and business information for decades, and they are legendary for their stability, with low incidence of data corruption and uptimes measured in years to decades.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
10 steps for builidng a successful software product:
1) Fire half (perhaps all) of your programming staff. Most of them don't know know the difference between a heap and a stack, don't have a clue beyond the Java language, and if faced with the prospect of learning x86 assembly language, they'd faint.
2) Hire people that *do* know the difference between a heap and a stack, perhaps have written in some assembly somewhere (even if just in college), and have figured out how to use a few more languages besides Java.
3) When doing #2, ignore college degrees. Whether or not someone has one doesn't indicate whether or not they're a good programmer, at least until our the majority of our school system can actually teach the *relevant* skills.
4) Plan. Plan. Plan. Document. Plan. Flowchart. Plan. Plan. Discuss. Plan. Discuss. Plan. Document. Plan.
5) Code.
6) Discuss. Test. Fix. Discuss. Test. Fix.
7) Refactor
8) Repeat 6-7 until all the software has been reduced to the simplest, most error-free possible codebase for its functionality.
9) QA. (Yup, this happens *after* the testing in (6)!)
10) Ship.
-- sigs cause cancer.
It is certainly true that users place reliability very low on their list of priorities when buying products, but that does not necessarily means that they don't value reliability. It merely means that they take reliability for granted.
:-).
For example, the last time I filled in a car survey, I didn't put "does not explode when ignition key turned" anywhere on the form.
The problem is a fundamental one. There are way, way, way too many possible parties to blame. The only logical reaction for MS if such a law was enacted would be to immediately cease running any software that wasn't authorized by MS (with approriate fees, bars for competing programs, etc.), a situation that I imagine they see only in their fondest dreams. Legislation like this would be the perfect excuse. To be honest, even I would barely question their right to secure their system if they are going to be held responsible for its flaws.
As for the idea that open source software should be exempt - I doubt that you'd accept the idea that cars should be exempt from safety standard if they provided you with the blueprints
Why should liability be software or hardwar based?
If i design a system to move some gears via an operator pressing big electronic buttons as a mechanical engineery, why should an electronic engineer who designs a program to operate the gears be exempt?
We are both designing a system to do a job. As an electronic engineer, I make my system based on some OS, so either I or the OS manufacturer (which, I add, licences an OS, if it is used against the license terms, it is my liability) has the liability.
Don't be lazy allocating responsibility.
Why can't there be a "cutting edge" in reliability?
Because software needs to be thoroughly tested before it can be called reliable. "Cutting edge" software tends to be poorly (relativly speaking) tested, since it hasn't had that much time in the real world.
Therefore, for instance, Debian stable still uses kernel 2.2 by default (alltough there's a 2.4 installation flavour), because it's well tested and reliable. As a result, I've never experienced inconsistency or crashes with a Debian stable release.
(Now, if you want cutting edge Debian, there's always Debian Sid (also known as unstable)).
You want verified design? Cool, you can get it. You can get a design that is gaurenteed to have no bugs and to never crash. This exists today, however you need to be prepared to PAY for it, in many ways.
First, say goodbye to the concept of being able to load your own apps or run it on your own hardware. If the company is going to certify that everything will be bug free, they need to know that a 3rd party isn't going to fuck that up. Your system will be verified to run on a certian hardware and using certian software. You will not change any of that without consulting the company first to do a verification of the proposed changes, or you'll invalidate the gaurentee and service contract. After all, you can have 100% stable code, but if a peice of hardware has a dodgy kernel mode driver it doesn't matter, that can being the system down.
Second, you will have the access restricted. You won't be able to just put this system on teh Internet to be accessed in any way you like, it will be accessed only through verified channels. You cannot potentially have the integrity compramised by clients sending unforseen data to it so all access must be controlled.
Finally, you will pay in terms of price. IF you want a system of this level you are not getting it for under a thousand dollars. Think 6 or 7 figures, plus a yearly matenence contract since you yourself aren't allowed to maintain it.
We have systems of this level in the real world. Like the AT&T/Lucent phone switches that run most of your phone network. We have one at the university and know what? IT never goes down, it didn't even go down when they upgraded it from a 5ESS to a 7R/E. It is 100% reliable. However, it is totally inflexable. We can't mess arnound with new technologies with it, it does phones and it does them only one way. We don't even work on it directly, it came with two technicians as part of the service contract. Oh, and it cost nearly 20 million dollars.
Look, if you want to have a computer market where anyone is free to build hardware and assemble it how they like, and you can freely use whatever software you want, you have to accept that there WILL be problems and you won't get verified design. The big part of a verified design is just that, verification. You check EVERY part of the design and make sure it works properly with the other parts and has no errors. Well the problem is that hardware, software, and user interaction are all a part of that and all have to be restricted. Once a design has been tested and verified, it can't be changed without reverfying.
So, if you really want 100% reliability, and can afford it in terms of monetary cost and teh sacrafices you have to make, then don't whine, go and get it. Talk to IBM, EMC, Dell or the like. They'll design you a system to do what you need that will never crash ever. However you'll need to decide what it needs to do and be happy with that, because you won't be able to change it, and you'll have to pay a real cash premium for it.
I disagree about the article's assertion that there is no liability for defects in software.
I deal with embeddeded controls in industrial control equipment all of the time. I just had to change my insurance company last year and my rates went up because companies are being held accountable and insurance companies are paying out when people screw up. Many companies don't want to insure programmers anymore. Sounds like the hammer is coming down to me.
You may not be able to sue MS the next time Excel craps out on you but I assure you that you could sue a programmer because the system that he programmed dumped 1000 gallons of a toxic substance into your containment area or because you just released a toxic cloud of ammonia from your plant.
When the stakes are high, programmers tend to have to test a lot more. You still have to remain economically viable though. Three lines of code a day may work for NASA but the rest of us can't afford to be that inefficient. Of course the stuff that I can blow up is at most worth 10's of millions of $, not billions.
When it comes to embedded control apps, I don't think that things are much worse than they are for our physical counterparts. Yeah a plane crashed because of a bug in an altitude control system but they also crash because of other design problems in the mechanical, electrical, and materials engineering areas. I don't think that programmers are any less aware that lives depend on their work than any other type of engineer.
If you are doing number crunching types of applications, you also tend to run the code through a battery of tests. You can definitely be sued for screwing that stuff up.
Now little controllers in your dishwasher and your run of the mill desktop apps are held to a lower standard, I agree. You are rewarded by the market for getting new stuff out the door cheaply and quickly. You can certainly argue that it shouldn't be that way but the masses have spoken. If your stuff gets too far out of hand then the market will let you know. MS is definitely feeling the pressure from OSS and rightly so. I can bet you that they are atleast trying to respond. I can definitely see a big improvement between the Windows XP that I run on my notebook and desktop and the NT 4 that I ran a few years ago. I can also see that Windows 2000 is much better than NT 4 was on the server, but it isn't good enough yet and that is why a lot of people are moving to Linux for things like web servers, DB machines, etc. The market is speaking.
I would say that programmers are ultimately held accountable. I would hate to see things swing too far out of hand as I do think that it would ultimate stiffle innovation.
Lots of people don't even WANT reliable sofware - at least, they don't want to pay for it. I'll happily accept my software crashing once a week if it saves me $300 on the cost of what would otherwise be $100 software. The last thing we need is to have the software industry start to look like the healthcare industry, where everyone pays 3x what they should to cover the insurance in case someone needs to sue someone else.
If you need absolutely, positively reliable software for some purpose, than contract with a company who is willing to provide it, and pay the price it takes to get it. But Joe Blo software user should have to foot the bill because someone ELSE wants to force ALL software to be reliable under penalty of multi-million dollar lawsuit. If I sell an operating system designed to let you play MP3s and video games and browse the internet for $99, and you use it you run your mission-critical application that causes you to lose $100 million when it crashes, why should I be liable because you used my (albeit buggy) tool for a $100 million mission critical ap? It's YOUR job to assure that you are using the correct tools for the job, NOT the guy who makes the tools!
It's like cars - just because your transmission goes out doesn't mean you get to sue the manufacturer. You get your transmission fixed if you've purchased a car with warranty terms that allow it to be fixed, and otherwise you pay for it yourself.
paintball
If something is inherently unreliable then you don't need to fix it: you find ways to live with it. A perfect example of this is the internet itself. TCP is a reliable transport provided over IP, an unreliable internetworking layer.
Make no mistake: IP is explicitly and deliberately unreliable. This keeps it simple, and allows upper layers to choose appropriate quality of service parameters for their application.
How this relates to the issue of unreliable application software is fuzzy: but its pretty obvious that humans have adapted to the reality of the situation: the power-cycling protocol is just one example of the ways in which we cope.
If a situation is life-critical, then I'd be happier knowing that the system is designed to cope with glitches then if the system assumes these glitches have been tested out of existance. Cosmic Rays really do exist, so some level of unreliability is guarenteed!
Opinions my own, statements of fact may contain errors
In most places, free-as-in-beer stuff is already fundamentally a special case, because unless something of value changes hands in both directions, you don't have a contract.
Of course, free-as-in-speech software neither deserves nor should get any special privileges. If you make money by selling me an OS that happens to be GPL'd, open source, or otherwise "free", that's still something you're selling me. "Oh, you should have looked at all the source code for Linux and spotted the critical bug for yourself" isn't much of an excuse at that point; I'm paying you to have done that for me.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.