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Maybe we could start with this much less general principle:

Whenever the output of software is offered as evidence against you in court, you should be entitled to the source code of the software.

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The post office workers in the UK who where f-ed over by the government because the software was reporting things incorrectly could really have used this as well. Should all our financial systems be open source too?

Maybe it should be like Copyright or patents, you can keep things private for a while for an advantage, but then you would need to release all code as open source / public domain or similar? It should also be available before that to be reviewed by professionals following a formal process of some sort.

> Should all our financial systems be open source too?

Yes.

That's really a good thing you are on to there.

More downvotes than upvotes. :/

HN doesn't like calls to take responsibility for what we produce. Regulation and responsibility are anathema here. But no worries, the world is fortunately a lot larger than that and little by little the tide seems to be turning towards holding the producers of software accountable for the works they produce, just like every other engineering discipline.

I can't wait.

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