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Software Customer Bill of Rights

Posted by michael on from the we-the-people dept.

Cem Kaner of Badsoftware.com has written up a Software Customer Bill of Rights. Very appropriate considering our recent stories about Microsoft viruses, Dell's BIOS-clickwrap licensing agreement, etc.

2 of 293 comments (clear)

  1. Live up to marketing???? by EDA+Wizard · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "3. The product (or information service) must live up to the manufacturer's and seller's claims."

    When has any product ever "lived" up to the marketing claims? If I expected everything I bought to live up to their claims, I'd be dissapointed with every bar of soap, every beer, and every Big Mac.

  2. Re:Wishful thinking by cemkaner · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There is no Software Consumers' Association, but I have worked with lawyers from Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology and from Consumers Union on software contract law.

    When public anger with an industry rises, legislators get tempted to create laws to regulate the industry. Software publishing is particularly vulnerable because so many publishers have engaged in business practices that would be considered outrageous (and unlawful) in traditional markets AND because this is no longer a wildly expanding industry / employer in the United States.

    We can lay out some principles to advise those legislators, or we can lay back, and later complain that they got it all wrong.

    --
    Cem Kaner, Professor of Software Engineering, Florida Institute of Technology