In my courses, there is always a discussion of ethics focusing on the responsibilities we have to protect the public in our technology focused work.  Particularly in my software development classes we review the IEEE/ACM Code of Ethics and discuss in detail the individual responsibility every software developer has to maintain high standards in their work and protect the public from danger and damage that could result from flaws in their work.  But here’s the dichotomy – individual responsibility versus company immunity.  I stress individual responsibility for poor quality code in my classes and yet  major software companies have made themselves immune in their licensing agreements from damages resulting from  defects in their code.  This creates an impossible  situation particularly when we talk about security breaches and hacks resulting from insecure code development.  What is the incentive to develop secure or high quality code from the ground up, when it appears the only real duty is to send out updates and patches that create even more problems?  How do we reinforce individual ethics when employers have created tremendous loopholes to make themselves immune from similar responsibility?  We have tried to legislate corporate ethics through SOX and other legislation.  Do we need a similar approach to encourage ethics in software development?

Advertisement