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Comment by wolco | Hacker News Reader

You would lose the ability to practise medicine as a license is required.

Do you want to license software developers?

I think the way Uncle Bob said it was reasonable. We have a choice: either we commit to doing good ourselves, and get out of licensing. Or we fuck up repeatedly, and eventually someone else will force a licensing process upon us. And it will not be a pretty one, because it's unlikely the person designing it will know the first thing about how we work.

I think we should license some software developers - if you're developing software to be used in industries where the people using your software need to be licensed (i.e medical equipment, structural engineering, industrial control systems) then perhaps the software engineers should be similarly rigorously qualified.

But if you're working on video games, or pizza delivery, or really probably like 90% of software then no.

Medical software systems already have legal obligations that fall on (I believe) the CEO of a firm. In the CRO space for clinical trials for example you're often audited by the FDA, MHRA, and others to ensure your processes are documented and followed, your issues traced and corrected, etc. You also have a requirement to fulfil things like 21 CFR Part 11 for records and signatures tracking/management.

Failures of a company responsible for this kind of thing that lead to injuries or deaths can result in imprisonment of (at least) the CEO and possibly others. I'm not sure licensing is necessary here, that's what documented process is supposed to manage (change tracking, development process, etc.)

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