[mcmancini]

Sorry, but I would argue that not reading patents relative to your project is practicing negligence. Maybe that gets you out of trebled damages for willful infringement, but it opens you up to other liabilities and is against professional ethics.

[rblatz]

Whose professional ethics? Yours, mine, a patent trolls? Since there is nothing like a PE for computer programmers professional ethics is a very blurry thing. I'd say needlessly opening myself and my employer to trebel damages and claims of being inspired by patents is against my professional ethics. I'll describe what I've done to my employer, and if their legal representation decides to investigate potential patent issues, that's up to them.

[mcmancini]

Stick your head in the sand if you want, but for a couple years now there has been PE licensure for software engineering: http://ncees.org/about-ncees/news/ncees-introduces-pe-exam-f...

Beyond the NCEES, the IEEE Computer Society and ACM jointly publish a code of ethics for software engineering: http://www.computer.org/web/education/code-of-ethics

Even if you're not a member, their code of ethics is similar to every other professional code of ethics I've seen. I don't see what's blurry about it.

[sukilot]

None of those have force of law or government-regulated licensing. Anyone can throw up a website with heir own definition if professional ethics. An obsolete trade association's website isn't privileged.

[mcmancini]

I guess I don't understand what you mean by a PE not being government-regulated licensing? If you mean that a software engineering PE isn't mandated for work, then I agree that's true but I think that's short-sighted in view of the trends for safety-critical projects. Regardless of government mandates, I see it as problematic from a liability standpoint to sign off on safety-critical projects now that the cat is out of the bag.

Bringing it back to the top of the thread, I think that willful ignorance is a bad recommendation, would not help in a legal situation, would be negligent, and would be contrary to a professional code of ethics. Maybe you feel that a consultant or someone working on areas outside of the safety-critical domain doesn't need to follow a professional code or act in a professional manner? Completely disagree if that is the case.

As far as IEEE-CS and ACM being "obsolete trade associations", agree to disagree. I'm not aware of a better trade organization than those two.

Honestly, I don't understand the backlash against professionalism.