Ask HN: A question about ethics in Computer Science
Nevertheless, some faculty and I went to a nearby company with the intent of selling the software. The demo went fine, and indeed, it has the ability to perform as advertised, but not without many bugs and crashes (demo was fine because we knew what not to do). The company was mildly impressed and is considering splicing/replacing their software with ours.
It is my personal belief, at this point in time, that doing so would be a bad idea for their company, with them potentially sinking a lot of money into a risky action. (If you think any weight should be given to how successful the company is: they are a small, financially stable consulting firm that sells software on the side, that is all I know.)
While we by no means have lied about the integrity of the software, I feel like we've hidden important details. The company has a third party programming their own software, so it's not like they asked us the important software related questions.
Should I personally email the company (behind my employer's back) and tell them the truth: that's it's janky software? Or should I just leave the software sales to the appropriate faculty member, it's their problem? Should I care more about the company's position because it actually affects people with jobs instead of tenured faculty? It brings up many questions and this is the first time I have had to deal with ethics in CS.