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Comment by stocksinsmocks | Hacker News Reader

How about licensure and liability instead? That’s the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the rest of the engineering world. Sure it’s a guild system with a new name, but if the bridge collapses, somebody is going to be in a courtroom.

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Customers are free to demand that software vendors take liability for certain defects or failures as part of contract negotiation. There's no need for governments to get involved.

For software that's actually safety critical, like avionics, there are already sufficient regulatory controls.

Actually it is necessary. That’s why your bridge engineer has to satisfy a licensing board that he or she knows what they’re doing before they seal a set of plans. Clients can’t distinguish good from bad engineering. They shouldn’t have to figure out if you know what you’re doing.

Actually it isn't necessary. Unlike bridges, very little software is safety critical. Clients don't need to try to distinguish good from bad software development, they can just require a certain level of performance and reliability in the contract with clear financial penalties for failure.

There's a better sense of safety if you do so from within, but we can't agree on what best standards are as an industry, let alone enforce them.

And the one in the courtoom is the head of the engineering firm, not the low level guy :)

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