[ken47]

In most companies, businesspeople without any real software dev experience control the purse strings. Such people should never run companies that sell life-or-death software.

The reality is there is plenty of space in the software industry to trade off velocity against "competent" software engineering. Take Instagram as an example. No one is going to die if e.g. a bug causes someone's IG photo upload to only appear in a proper subset of the feeds where it should appear.

There's a lot of incompetence by choice.

[marcodave]

In the civil engineering world, at least in Europe, the lead engineer would sign papers that would put him as liable if a bridge or a building structure collapses on its own. The civil engineers face literal prison time if they make a sloppy work.

In the software engineering world, we have TOSs that deny any liability if the software fails. Why?

It boils my blood to think that the heads of CrowdStrike would maybe get a slap on the wrist and everything will slowly continue as usual as the machines will get fixed.

People died for this bug.

[peheje]

Let's think about this for a second. I agree to some extend with what you are trying to say, I just think there's a critical thing missing here in your consideration, and that is usage of the product outside its intended purpose/marketing.

Civil engineers built bridges knowingly that civilians use them, and structural failure can cause deaths. The line of responsibility is clear.

SW companies (like CrowdStrike (CS)) it MAY BE less straight-forward.

A relevant real-world example is the use of consumer drones in military conflicts. Companies like DJI design and market their drones for civilian use, such as photography. However, these drones have been repurposed in conflict zones, like Ukraine, to carry explosives. If such a drone malfunctioned during military use, it would be unreasonable to hold DJI accountable, as this usage clearly falls outside the product's intended purpose and marketing.

The liability depends on the guarantees they make. If they market it for AV used for critical infrastructure, such as healthcare (seems like they do https://www.crowdstrike.com/platform/) - by all means, it's reasonable to hold with accountable.

However, SW companies should be able to sell products and long as they're clear what the limitations are, and it needs to be clearly communicated to the customers.

[ken47]

We have those TOS's in the software world because it would be prohibitively expensive to make all software reliable as a publicly used bridge. For those who died as a direct result of CrowdStrike, that's where the litigious nature of the US becomes a rare plus. And CrowdStrike will lose a lot of customers over this. It isn't perfect, but the market will arbitrate CrowdStrike's future in the coming months and years.