Mark Wonsil <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>
>Please, keep the lawyers out of it.  If you think the dot bomb was bad, you
>will surely push every programming job overseas if you get the
>ambulance-chasers (abend-chasers?) involved.  (Why is Las Vegas without a
>Level I Trauma Center?)  Litigation rarely gets you what you want and you
>get more than you bargain for...
>
>Mark 'not trying to start a lawyer-joke thread' Wonsil
>

It isn't a joke and as history shows, legal recourse is probably the only way a fundamental shift in thinking about software development will occur.  Consider the degree to which consumers were exposed to outright dangerous and shoddy products prior to activists like Ralph Nader and compare that situation with the current state of software products.  Certainly the legal system may appear senseless when people successfully sue companies for cutting their own findgers off hefting a lawnmower up to trim a hedge (Sunbeam) or spilling coffee in their lap (McDonalds) but the fact remains that without the coercive effect of court ordered remedies our lives would all be a lot more hazardous, and ultimately more costly, than otherwise.  

Someday, some large firm or organized group of software users is going to look at the real total costs of having bought into Microsoft or whatever and is going to go looking for their money back. It wasn't part of the bargin that by buying a word processing package you necessarily open your corporate networks to being shut down for several days by a script virus. Consequential losses like that are solely attributable to poor software design and negligence. Blaming the script kiddies for pitching stones at a glass house only diverts attention from the architect's decision to build a glass house to begin with.  Architects and engineers are supposed to build for the environment that exists, not some unachivable ideal. From what I have been reading about what is going on in the development of MS's new .NET server OS, this may echo some of the advice that they are getting from their own lawyers regarding the future.


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James B. Byrne                mailto:[log in to unmask]
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