🚀 go-pugleaf

bhayden@teal.csn.org (Bruce Hayden) writes:


>The question is how much longer can we as a society accept buggy software.
>Sure - I know as well as anyone that with present technology it is almost
>impossible to get all bugs out. What I am advocating is that if you release
>software with (too many) bugs in it, you may face a competent plaintiff's 
>attorney who will use your failure to document your attempts at software 
>quality control against you in showing negligence.

"We as a society" doesn't have a thing to do with it.  How each of 
us tolerates bugs vs cost is the issue.  I suggest that most of us
can tolerate the current level of commercial software bugs pretty
much forever.  For example, I currently use some of the most buggy
software on the face of the earth in my business (DOS and Windows).
Nontheless I know how to work around most of the bugs with little 
trouble and produce a magazine using Windows-based tools.  Would I
like a bug-free environment?  Sure.  Could I afford it?  Not likely.

>Most everyone seems to be of the opinion that since everyone is doing it
>(releasing buggy software), it is ok (despite knowing how to at least
>minimize the number of bugs). Other areas of tort law have discarded this
>type of reasoning. Instead, the law seems to take the position that if
>you know how to mitigate a problem, and don't (especially for economic
>reasons), you are taking a gamble that the money saved will be greater
>than the money lost in litigation. You thus have no reason to complain
>when you are found liable for your failure to mitigate the problem.

Yep, that's just what we need, Bruce, is for the lawyers to make software
as unaffordable as the lawyers and the goverment have cars.  Do you 
REALLY want to have to take out a 5 year loan to buy a word processor
the same way you have to do to buy an econobox these days?  Suppose,
perhaps, that some of us would rather spend a bit less money and NOT 
pay for exhaustive proofs of correctness?  This will be like everything
else that lawyers stick their slimey noses into - thoroughly fucked up
and we'll all be worse off for it.

John
-- 
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