[hilbert42]

"My civil engineer friends face losing their licenses, fines or jail time if they are found professionally negligent."

These standards ought to be applied more widely and done in conjunction with tightened consumer law. In many cases the quality of electronics equipment has gone to the dogs. I could give instances of appliances I use that can only be used in a hobbled mode—numbers of published functions simply don't work—because their firmware bugs are so bad.

These devices are so bad they wouldn't pass as early developmental mockups let alone early prototypes in a professional engineering establishment. I'm damned if I know why the hell consumers put up with the situation and haven't revolted, it remains a mystery.

Things won't improve until they do.

[emodendroket]

I don't think jail time for making software too bloated and slow for your liking is a serious proposal.

[bolanyo]

I'm not a strong advocate of this, or of jail time in general for non-violent offenders, but as a thought experiment, suppose that Acme Auto release updates to their car's software which make the UI more laggy and less intuitive to navigate. After they do, there are a cluster of similar accidents - distracted driver hits a pedestrian when they should have stopped. These can be shown statistically to affect Acme models with the software updates significantly more than any other make of car, and more than Acmes which don't have the update. A class action lawsuit is started against Acme by both crash victims and drivers. In discovery, correspondence between software engineers is found. Engineer A writes to Product Manager B and says that they don't think the new build is safe, because they were forced to compromise latency performance, and button placement is now more surprising, having changed again. QA Engineer C chimes in and says that since the changes apply to features critical to driving such as de-misting, they won't be prepared to sign off on the change. PM B says that they have to go with the new version in order to meet internal targets on engagement with entertainment apps. They overrule A and C, as company rules allow them to do.

Do you think B should face any personal consequences within a public justice system? Or Acme is just liable for a big payout and then upper management decide who takes the blame?

[hilbert42]

"Do you think B should face any personal consequences within a public justice system?

Yes he should. Reason, because he now knows the consequences of proceeding if the problem not fixed first (he was told them by engineer A.).

Once aware, everyone has the responsibility to act. The Occupational Health & Safety laws of many jurisdictions are written exactly on this principle. Such laws don't just apply to managers and decision-makers, a floor sweeper who overheard the conversion would also be culpable if it were proven that he did not inform authority of the fact and or if he had good reason to suspect Management would do nothing.

Same for Engineer A, he would still be culpable if after telling Product Manager B the facts and he knew or had good reason to suspect Product Manager B or others responsible did not or would not act to fix the problem. Moreover, unlike the floor sweeper, Engineer A, due to his extensive knowledge of the facts and his senior decision-making position (as an engineer—even if not in charge of marketing or production), the Law would still require him to follow though with either senior management and or external authority until he was satisfied (to the level of his professional ability) that the problem was sufficiently in the hands of responsible others.

Whilst these laws vary between different jurisdictions the common themes are if one—and that's anyone, inside or outside the company—knows there's danger and or potential for someone to be harmed or killed then that person has to act, irrespective—full stop. Second, the more responsible or more knowledgeable someone is as to the consequences of something or some process going wrong then the more incumbent it is for that person to act (the floor sweeper in Boeing's factory would not be expected to know the wrong alloy had been used in engine turbine blades but the engineer would).

These laws were introduced to avoid problems like the Challenger and the Boeing 737Max disasters, and the Purdue Pharmaceuticals opioid crisis. Unfortunately, the US lags behind in either implementing them or making existing laws sufficiently strong.

[nordsieck]

> I don't think jail time for making software too bloated and slow for your liking is a serious proposal.

Especially since the boundaries of "making software" is pretty blurry.

Would creating a suboptimal Excel spreadsheet count as "making software too bloated"? A pretty strong case could be made for that.

Would creating a clunky personal homepage count as "making software too bloated"? A pretty strong case could be made for that.

[bomewish]

You don't find the idea both kinda hilarious and somehow vaguely appealing even though it's a bit nonserious at the same time? I love it as a thought experiment.

[emodendroket]

Ideas that are silly thought experiments have a way of actually getting implemented once too many people start paying attention to them.

[hilbert42]

"too bloated and slow for your liking"

I neither said nor implied this. To be clear, the products in question were sold under false presences, as they were sold with features that—as far as the lay consumer is concerned—don't exist (just because I'm a technical person and I know they are almost certainly software bugs and or are not designed as per specifications is immaterial). In essence, by deliberately selling a substandard product they've committed fraud.

Here's one of the many examples I could list but it's a clearcut easy one to understand. I have three identical PVRs/STBs (Personal Video Recorders/Set Top Boxes) of one brand and type—so the problem is not just a single faulty unit. These are the type that you add external storage via USB, 2.5" or thumb drives.

Advertised on the outside of their boxes is the statement that they will take external storage to 2TB in size, the scanty manual—if you can call it that—that's sealed in the box which you can't read until one unboxes the device makes a very clearcut statement that the maximum limit of external storage is ONLY 700MB drive (a rather strange limit methinks), and 1/3rd that published on the box. In practice, these units simply wiil not work with ANY external USB drive 2.5" rotary or SSD drives—even the lowest current SSDs of 120GB or smaller—which is in direct contradiction to what's stated on the box and in the so-called manual.

They will however work with thumb drives up to 128GB (I haven't tried bigger). Incidentally, have you ever seen a 2TB thumb drive? Right, I haven't either.

Thats not all, there are software bugs and an UNSTATED limitation that only six programs can be programmed at one time (this is an unheard of restrictive limit, I've never reached the limit on my other units although one type, which has other bugs and problems, says its limit is 32).

I also have three other PVRs but of a different brand (a well-known international mob). All three have the SAME identical model number but two have completely different electronics and their firmware operates in a totally different fashion to the first (clearly built by a different subcontractor), Even the boxes they came in are all identical.

I discovered this when the first unit failed and I bought two more of the same. Moreover, the first unit wasn't even out of warranty so the second purchase was only about six months on from the first.

To make matters worse, before the first unit failed and after getting nowhere with the local distributer I'd hunted around the internet for a firmware upgrade to fix the annoying bugs but couldn't find an ungrade (little wonder if different hardware exists for a given model). The so-called identical replacements are not only operationally very different but they have so many bugs that they are actually unusable. I'm still working on exchange/warranties and such.

Those two brands are not alone in having masses of bugs, I've three other brands—five all up with even more model numbers (yes, I've boxes of these damned things). The bugs in a third band are so bad that it allows one to program the same timeslot on different channels simultaneously—which channel takes precedent and is recorded is pot luck, at other times, about one in three, it fails to record the scheduled program, only a black screen (it switches to blank instead of a channel—but give credit where credit's due, it does switch to blank at the correct time)!

And believe it or not that brand/model has been on the market for several years and it still is without any firmware upgrages being available.

Here, I've presented only the tip of the iceberg—and that's only the PVR/STB story. Where else would you like me to start?

People should not have to put up with this shit, it wastes time and human effort not to mention wastes resources and the environment is clogged up with dead and discarded e-waste and other junk. A simple way around the problem would be to license both companies and their design engineers and threaten them with loss of license for producing junk. With importers, bring in junk and they'd lose their import license.

Implement these rules and most of the problems would soon disappear. In extreme cases where irresponsible designs threaten safety and life then loss of license and jail time would be a just measure.

[emodendroket]

You'd just get a lot less software as people instituted enough checks to make progress glacial. Not everything needs to be developed like it is a medical device or aerospace software.

[neural_thing]

Singapore has criminal liability for software malfunctions. I don't think they've sent anyone to jail for a software bug yet, but the law allows for it.

[hilbert42]

Rightly so, if justified by the consequences—to the extent of causing injury or death.

As with other professions, civil, chemical engineering etc., when the outcomes are the same (people killed or injured etc.) then the punishment should also be the same.

Software design should be no exception to any other profession just because it's common for programs to have bugs.

Moreover, the profession of programming now calls itself Software Engeering, if it wants to play with the Big Boys then it must face the same consequences when things go wrong.