UK House of Lords Readies Stake for Heart of UK Software Industry
The UK House of Lords might be looking at ways to put software companies on the hook for their quality negligence:
The Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords published a report in August on personal Internet security, which concludes that it is all too easy for vendors to “dump risks” onto consumers through licensing agreements to avoid paying the costs of insecurity.
The report stated that efforts to promote best practices have been hampered by a lack of commercial incentives to make products secure. The committee’s solution is to propose transferring the cost of insecurity onto demonstrably negligent hardware and software manufacturers, with the long-term goal of establishing a framework for vendor liability across Europe.
This sounds like a good idea, but it runs counter to my antigovernment leanings as well. We’ve seen in America what happens when you make company executives spend lots of money on financial compliance and sign off on it personally; you’ll see the same thing and other unforeseen consequences of this action, and I’ll be hanged if I sign off on the quality of any product I test if my neck is in the noose.
September 17th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
The best thing to do is to raise awareness of software quality, reliability, and security. Software quality will rise only when customers demand it. Until then, I’m not holding my breath.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
Hah, how little you understand the industry!
The first company that wants quality or at least wants to pay lip service to quality will demand the government make laws because it doesn’t want to be the only one burdened with extra cost.
Kind of like Google’s recent push for privacy laws; so its drive to do the right thing won’t make it the only one spending money on it.