Taking On Software Liability - Again 382
An anonymous reader writes "You may remember an article in which a BBC correspondent wrote an article criticising current software licenses. In answer to the huge discussion that this brought about, he has written another article defending his views. From the article: 'It is possible to make error-free code, or at least to get a lot closer to it than we do at the moment, but it takes time and effort. Doing it will probably mean that commercially-available code is more expensive and cause major problems for free and open source software developers. But I still believe that the current situation is unsustainable, and that we should be working harder to improve the quality of the code out there.'"
yeah (Score:2, Informative)
Then let him do it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
Bug free software is possible, so long as it is done right and people are prepared to pay for it. Right now, software is mainly "good enough" and "cheap enough". What is "good enough" and what is "cheap enough" will depend on what is being done.
Re:Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
If a bridge falls, people die.
If an order entry system fails, it gets rebooted/patched/datafixed and it's back within minutes/hours, good as new. Some time is lost, but no lives.
For software that's life-critical, the quality bar is set much, much higher.
Having non-programmers tell programmers that they expect all software to be as reliable as a bridge is ridiculous, particula
Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful)
If an order entry system fails, it gets rebooted/patched/datafixed and it's back within minutes/hours, good as new. Some time is lost, but no lives.
Okay, forget bridges. Think appliances.
I heard about a case against Hamilton-Beach because a nut was falling off on their blenders. To paraphrase you, "spin the nut back on, it's back within seconds/minutes". People don't take that kind of crap from things they understand, why should they take it from software simply because they don't understand it?
For software that's life-critical, the quality bar is set much, much higher.
One would hope so, but where are the programmers and managers going to learn how to work that way when the other 99% of software is made shit-poorly? I heard about a $20,000 accounting package that was done in VB. I have nothing in particular against VB, but it's not an appropriate tool to do a large, serious mission-critical system like that. Yet they get away with it because nobody holds them accountable.
Having non-programmers tell programmers that they expect all software to be as reliable as a bridge is ridiculous, particularly since they don't appreciate the cost of what they're asking for. Those programmers silly enough to try and meet those requirements will quickly find themselves out of business when they first ask for $300 million dollars to develop an order entry system.
How about programmers doing it?
All software does not need to be as reliable as a bridge. Mission-critical or life-safety software does. Software sold in high volume should be reliable, because the cost can be amortized, and small defects that only cost a minute or two are multiplied by millions of users to become big problems. That's what class action is all about. Simple stuff like an order entry system should be done simply, and therefore not have problems.
If I buy a product that doesn't work, or that has obvious defects, I have a right as a consumer to compensation from the company that sold a shoddy product. That's part of how we keep companies from knowingly selling crap and pretending it's good. Now, the libertarian view is that if a company is selling crap then the consumers will stop buying from it, but when the whole industry is selling crap and the average consumer doesn't understand the situation well enough to recognize that, what is a consumer to do?
Analogy: picture the auto industry in the 70s. American cars weren't terrible, but the quality control was bad enough that the cars were totally inconsistent. The big three would tell you that making defect-free cars would raise the prices to the point that nobody could afford a car. People accepted this, because they didn't know better. Then the Japanese showed up. They delievered cars that, while not perfect, blew away the big three in terms of quality, and at very reasonable prices. It can be done.
will quickly find themselves out of business when they first ask for $300 million dollars to develop an order entry system.
Now, at the risk of being a Slashbot(tm), I can think of a major software company which has historically been known for low quality, high volume consumer software. I seem to recall that they have something like $40bn in cash on hand. Seems to me that they could afford an extra $300m on each and every product they have ever put out without jeopardizing their company financials. As an industry leader, perhaps that would force other companies put out better software.
Then again, it's always nice to have the easy excuse when my software crashes.
"It's a Windows bug, what do you want me to do about it?"
More reasons (Score:4, Informative)
Another difference is, typically if an engineer says something is unsafe, people actually fucking listen to her.
Oh yeah, and you can't hide how a bridge works. Proprietary code encourages cut corners.
I believe that good software is attainable. But that won't necessarily come from legislation, it'll come from the industry growing up.
Re:More reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:More reasons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bullshit (Score:2)
and also, for the most part bugs AREN'T costly. 99% of software no one dies if it crashes. and software that IS that critical does get that kind of treatment and never does fail. so your analogy with the bridge is the only bullshit here mate.
this guys problem, is he expects complex software to never crash. he also has no idea about just how much that extra testing he
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly, it's the customer's responsibility to demand a certain level of quality they feel comfortable with and pay accordingly. Just as you don't use the same cheap metal for a skyscraper that you do for a back yard fence. There are markets for high quality programs as well as low quality programs, it's up to the customer to fi
Re:Bullshit (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
What we need are fewer prima-donna developers loaded with excuses as to why it can't be done, or why they can't take the time to write unit tests, or whatever, and bring in some competent people with
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
BINGO. Why not let the market decide?
If it's like earthquake-prone apartment buildings in Tokyo, then it's reasonable to step in and mandate that everyone, no matter how poor, should pay for software designed to a government-mandated quality standard. Until then, why not let buyers and sellers decide on their own?
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
I can believe that in many cases, but I have difficulty with the theory that government is better informed.
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, take your bridge. A few thousand rivits. A few thousand cables. A few hundred major steel members. Lots of concrete. These things come from different quarries and foundries where they are heavily processed to make them pretty close to what they are supposed to be. A couple dozen different welding machines run by a couple dozen different welders. Thousands of welding rods, each with a slighly different chemistry.
The bridge sits on a p
Re:Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact is, this industry is built on the ability to ship crap-quality software specifically because they can get away with it. Reliable, high-quality software and hardware (from operating systems to major enterprise-class databases to whatev
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
If a company wants to shop around and find a guarantee, fine. Requiring legal liabilty of all software vendors will just create another mess of goverment regulatory groups, certification boards and happy insurance salesmen.
Software IS different (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at software and ask yourself where that prototype is, that can tweaked reworked until all obvious and so obvious issues have been tested for? You will end up noticing that the prototype and the final product is the same thing. While a bridge can be tested based on a number of complex mathematical formula, I am not so sure that software can be tested in the same way. Software is designed and developed based on a number of philosophies and sometimes these even have to interface with other programs based on other philosophies. Over time the complexity grows to a point where testing it 100% is like trying to predict what the stock market is going to do next week. I would like to give a figure to what we are able to predict, but that I will leave that for someone else, since I am not sure I am qualified to do so.
At the same time I will say that there are a good number of things for which you can create unit tests for and these help avoid the most obvious issues. The non-obvious issues, based on difficult to reproduce scenarios, variable dependencies are a little trickier.
Things are also improving thanks to libraries that implement much in the way of reusable code, but here too there is an issue. Imagine that you designed your program to be dependent on libraries x, y and z, and then the user adds libraries that effect the libraries you depend on, how can you predict what is going to happen?
You will notice that most mission critical systems are designed to have only the most essential features (as compared to desktop software) and are often coded with very precise memory management and sometimes even avoid the pointer type and instead using only primitives. Trying to develop most applications this way would be long and laborious and your users would be complaining that his complex office software doesn't do what (s)he wants (remember they can't agree on what they want), even if it is 99.999% stable.
I am not saying it is impossible, its just that I have yet to see an approach that is 100% effective and for 100% of cases. Yes I am a software developer, so I do have a certain bias.
Re:Software IS different (Score:3, Interesting)
What you say may be true, but I don't think it's the use of prototypes and up-front planning that separate true engineering fields from software "engineering". Those are merely the processes that have been found to work effectively in other disciplines, and we know many processes that work and many that don't for software development, too.
I think what really separates engineering from most of today's software development is that in real engineering, you have an engineer. This is a highly trained, experien
Re:Software IS different (Score:3, Interesting)
When you build a bridget, an architect designs every detail of that bridge. An engineer ensures that the bridge is structurally sound, and develops the methods used to build it.
The people that actually BUILD the bridge, are, for all intents and purposes, monkeys. Skilled monkeys, to be sure, but monkey's no less. They do what they're told, and have no "creative input" into the building of the bridge.
Re:Software IS different (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with much of what you say as things stand today, but I think you're making an unstated assumption that this is the only way things can work.
A lot of programming is donkey work, and requires little more than joining the relevant library code together in the appropriate pattern. IME, the key to getting this right is that you usually need:
Re:Software IS different (Score:3, Interesting)
When you build a bridge, you need a human to make decisions about various things, but those decisions are based on how to build the bridge, not how the bridge will operate once built. Programmers make decisions every day that effect how the software runs even after it is built.
A bridge builder might have to decide whether to use a shovel or a b
Complex Algorithmic Code Is Unreliable (Score:3, Interesting)
It is impossible to guarantee the reliability of complex algorithmic software. This is something that Frederick P. Brooks has shown in his famous "No Silver Bullet" paper. However, Brooks' arguments fall apart in one important area. Although Brooks' conclusion is correct as far as the unreliability of complex algorithmic software is concerned, it is correct for the wrong reason. Software programs are unreliable
Re:Bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
I want you to build a bridge.
I won't say where- or what the end conditions are on each end- because this bridge needs to work in about 2 million different places.
Now- as to what will cross the bridge. I won't tell you that either. It might be a car- it might be a convoy of tanks.
Now... as to the basic laws of the universe (the operating system). I can't tell you much about them either. For example, gravity may change at any time to be higher or lower. The tensile strength of various materials may change unpredicatably with various patches to reality.
Your work force will be available to work 2 to 16 hour days and may or may not comprehend instructions written in english.
The bridge needs to be built from scratch from materials using new refining methods so you cannot use any reference materials to analyze how strong it has been historically.
Finally, this bridge must be made of at least 9 million different pieces (opcodes). The subunits will be assembled by a robot of some kind (Compiler) so you will not know the details of how the units work- only how they are supposed to work as units.
---
I'm sorry but you really do not understand what you are talking about.
Re:Then let him do it. (Score:2)
If software companies spent the time and money quality takes, then they would produce software that is less buggy. Not bug-free, but much less buggy.
Anyone can do it... (Score:2)
Unlike almost every other branch of engineering, software has no accreditation standands or process. Totally unlike, say, those civil engineers who built and designed the bridges we're using as a comparison. You'll notice that the vast majority of those don't fall down after a day's use.
Re:Then let him do it. (Score:2)
Avoiding liability isn't about producing a perfect product. There are no perfect products. A company can avoid liability (in cases where liability laws haven't been modified by law to create strict liability schemes) when that company shows that they took efficient measures at preventing harm arising from the use of their product. If $1 of effort prevents $5 of damage and you fail to make your product safer, you will be held liable for damages suffered by your users. If $5
Re:Then let him do it. (Score:2)
Perfect software is possible, with due diligence. I submit TeX into evidence.
Good point. All we need to get perfect code is programmers of Don Knuth's caliber.
Surely there are plenty of them around. Right?
Re:Then let him do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. We all know that informed, skilled geeks are usually the last people who are turned to when it comes to software project management, which is notorious for prioritising deadlines ahead of working code, cutting corners on quality controls and testing, not adhering to recognised (by conscientious geeks) best practices, etc. Usually, the reason cited for this is cost: "But we can't be competitive if we do it properly and others don't!" Well, that's kinda the point of TFA: if everyone has to do it properly, that no longer matters.
Yes, I imagine that really will dramatically reduce the rate at which software is produced, at least at first. However, is that any great loss? Look at the financial damage that a single security flaw in a widely used piece of software can cause. Look at the cost in human life of a serious software bug in fields like medicine, transportation or energy services.
It's clear that left to the short-sighted bean-counters, fatal (literally) bugs are shipped in the name of profits. It's also clear that we can do much better: most software development places I've seen don't even have basic code reviews in place, yet research shows that simply getting a second pair of eyes on every single line of code you submit can remove around 5/6 of bugs before they're even checked into the source control system. Look at the amount of poorly-designed spaghetti code that gets written. This sort of bug-ridden mess happens on even pretty good projects today, and it's entirely unnecessary.
Don Knuth is not the only good programmer in the world. Perhaps if software vendors (not those who give it away - you get what you pay for) were legally responsible for their work, the rest of the good developers who are capable of running their projects to much higher standards would be valued as much as they should be, and the profits-over-safety culture that currently dominates software management could be wiped out in the interests of everyone. I doubt that would produce much perfect software, but it would certainly be a lot better than it is today, which is in the interests of everyone (except cheaposoft developers, but including developers who produce products of quality).
Re:Then let him do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing the point, though not as badly as the grandparent.
It takes a genius to write an amazing program like TeX or Emacs, but no genius is required to write a program that is free of bugs.
To compare with something I understand, it takes a person like Gauss to prove the law of quadratic reciprocity, but even a very average graduate student can understand it and to check that the proof is correct.
As a working mathematician with some background in computer science, I am willing to attest that writing low-level software is wrought with many perils which mathematicians never encounter. Closed source, incompatible devices, hardware failures -- factors like these make programming a device driver very different from proving a theorem. But, in my humble opinion, there is absolutely no excuse for writing a buggy word processor over a well-documented API. In a high-level environment like this a program can and should be designed in a way that allows provability of correctness. Throw in practices like peer review and modular design and you will have college kids writing bug-free software in no time.
Re:Then let him do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is also performance to consider. Your bunch of college kids may write code that's mathematically correct but when assembled processes 1 transaction a second. This sort of thing occurs with frameworks like J2EE. It's easier to write modular pieces and assemble them it hands you a large performance penalty.
I'm afraid I don't really share your faith in proofs of correctness for large systems. Apart from the problems scaling up these approaches they assume that you can easily mathematically describe how the thing is supposed to behave.
With a word processor this might be something like i18n issues. We might specify, design, build and test the thing without considering the user might not have a us-ascii character set and then it breaks in China. Do we go back to square one and revisit and extend the mathematical model? Then spend x years rippling changes from the theoretical model into the code?
I can't recall seeing anyone use proofs of correctness for something like your word processor example. Can you give me a reference to the literature please as I'm interested to know whether this was successful?
There are arguments for more formal approaches to building software but throughout their working life people are told to 'deliver it quickly and we'll fix it later'. It's a fact of life that people in the 'formal everything' camp need to accept. Programmers don't set out on a project determined to write bugs. Many of them are a result of the poor processes and unrealistic expectations that are endemic in the industry.
BTW I'll take lectures from journalists like the BBC blowhard when he can mathematically prove that his writing contains no errors.
Ame
Re:Then let him do it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Didn't say it was easy or trivial (its not). But it is humanly possible.
And it's humanly possible to run a marathon in less than 2.5 hours, but if you have to move a large number of people 20+ miles on foot, you'd better expect it's going to take a little longer than that.
"Humanly possible" in no way implies "doable on a large scale", and that's what we need. A *lot* of software must be written, so you have to expect that most of it will be written by average programmers. Implying that they ought to be able to because Don Knuth can do it makes no sense (and as Goonie pointed out, Knuth had some other advantages, like no marketing dept pushing to get the release out before the next trade show).
I'll agree that software could be better than it is, but TeX is not a useful data point.
Re:Then let him do it. (Score:3, Insightful)
There's more to it than just the code (Score:5, Insightful)
The computer world if full of many variables and I don't see this happening anytime soon, though with recent laws you never know.
Re:There's more to it than just the code (Score:2, Informative)
Re:There's more to it than just the code (Score:2, Interesting)
As most commercial software is shipped precompiled it isn't an issue for the end user is the compiler buggered it up or not. Standard contract law means you sue the company you brought the product off that is faulty and they then sue the people who created the fault and exposed them to the liability. This is as le
Re:There's more to it than just the code (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's not forget "another piece of software's fault." Installing Software package B might overwrite a registry setting or DLL needed by software package A. On top of that, software package B might leave something running in the memory as a service that conflicts with something software package A does.
You are correct, there are WAY too many variables when dealing with software failures. And if this guy were actually a software developer he'd know that it's pretty much impossible to make something completely bug free. The most you can hope for is something that rarely has a bug or recovers if it encounters ones without losing its place/data.
Error-free software... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Error-free software... (Score:5, Interesting)
Truly error free is not a likely state for software.
Re:Error-free software... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the same vein, instead of trying to make every part of the code perfect, how about designing some redundancy into the code?
I leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what the hell that means.
Re:Error-free software... (Score:2)
Have you been reading my Calculus textbook? If I had a nickel for every time I saw that...
The Market Decides (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Market Decides (Score:4, Insightful)
He wants laws to be passed that would make some (or all?) kinds of disclaimers on warranty and fitness for a particular purpose illegal for software.
He wants it in the name of "consumer protection", but he does not realize that the consumers are not interested in paying the higher price tags this would put on software.
The only ones whom this would really protect would be corporations big enough to buy costly insurance against claim. They would be protected against competition from Open Source software and smaller companies that would drop out of the software market because of the risk of liability.
Re:The Market Decides (Score:2)
For the record, I do believe that he is right, to an extent. Software should be less buggy and there are ways to improve the situation. And yes, I am a programmer.
Re:The Market Decides (Score:2)
Re:The Market Decides (Score:2)
That's because quality and security are properties of software that are difficult to evaluate for most buyers; people end up with worse software than they actually need. This is a standard example where markets fail to reach the overall optimal outcome.
Re:The Market Decides (Score:3, Insightful)
If you look beyond the x86 desktop market, theres a LOT of software thats close to bug free. and the companies that Pay for things like high performance Oracle soloutions, massively parralel Solaris on Sparc systems, "continuous computing" (ULTRA high availability with high levels of disaster tollerance) OpenVMS on Alpha or Iatanium...
Companies that will pay more than $ 250 000 USD on a single sytem demand the highest quality of code, and these companies DO deliver it.
OpenVMS is renoun
Re:The Market Decides (Score:2)
People buy the least expensive software they can get away with.
No, people don't buy the least expensive software otherwise more people would be using FOSS not proprietary software. The'd also keep using the same software instead of upgrading both the software and the new hardware the software requires.
If the application is unreliable enough to regularly lose data it gets flushed out of the market.
I disagree here too, I don't know how many tymes people loss data because Windows crashs, yet it's the
he is full of shit (Score:5, Funny)
The companies writing the large systems usually have contracts which mean they are liable for damages, and this increases both the cost and the reliability of the resulting programs.
I must assume he doesn't work with internal apps much.
author is obviously unfamiliar with free software (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone knows that most free software, by virtue of peer review, has fewer bugs and errors than commercial code does. If what he means is that you have to be licensed, bonded and "protected" by a corporate staff of 800 pound gorillas to write code, then free software will have problems. Such a missallocation of resources still won't buy him better code.
This whole issue is a troll the non free software companies come up with every few years. It's a mistake for them, however, and will blow up in their faces. Free software will overcome such nonsense the same way Good Samaritans do. Worse, what kind of society would outlaw exchanging of advice on how to do something? That's what sharing source code it. Why not outlaw engineering texts instead?
Re:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa (Score:2)
Re:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously here people, most free software is complete tripe. The popular projects you hear about, Linux, Firefox, etc. are just a small fraction of what's out there. Peer review only works if people are interested in your project.
Open source tends to be written by/for people who care more about stability than features, and that's a major help, but it is not miraculously better. How many people here have actually sat down, and looked over the source of an open source project to check for bugs/exploits?
Re:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa (Score:4, Insightful)
You realize what you said is true, circular and bad news for commercial software, don't you?
What you call "tripe" is what the author wanted to get done and what no commercial software vendor would provide. Score one for free software - meeting user needs.
The "popular" projects do indeed rock and will be better than anything commercial because no firm can match the development effort. Look at the gnu debugger. The last time I checked it had more than 87 authors. Show me a commercial debugger that gets that much attention. That's just one of the thousands of gnu projects that make free software actually work. Score two for free software - in the end, what needs to get done gets done better.
Finally, you are half right about peer review only working on projects that other people care about. If you can't find a single other person in the world interested in your project you have a rare project indeed and won't find any help. Most people are not so original and will usually find dozens of projects that do something very close to what they want to do. So far, so good, where did you go wrong? When you turned a blind eye to the most popular non free software getting no such help at all. For all your customers can tell it was written by a lone monkey paid in bananas who was forbidden contact with the rest of the world. Final score - free software 3, commercial software zero.
This message composed and transmitted on a system run with complete tripe that just happens to have more features and run much better than any commercial software available.
liability iff no source (Score:5, Interesting)
So you assume everyone can write code? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So you assume everyone can write code? (Score:5, Funny)
least content ... EVER! (Score:2)
no thesis, no argument, no concrete examples of HOW to make software better or HOW to implement such liability.
i do understand this is a follow-up, but why exactly should ANYONE care about this mindless piece of crackpot-tery?
Shouldn't this be handled by supply and demand? (Score:5, Interesting)
could be another checkbox that all software companies are trying to reach.
"What? You don't guarantee works-as-advertised? Well, then I'm looking for a different product."
If computing magazines would update their testing methods and added this one checkbox, Microsoft just might say "oh, hey, we haven't covered that checkbox yet. We need to have every checkbox. Let's quickly drop by the legal department get this in order..."
Great (Score:5, Insightful)
The software vendors will not fix bugs because to fix them they have to admit they have them and will get the daylights sued out of them.
Re:Great (Score:2)
This is a laywer's wet dream. They've sued the living daylights out of car companies, tobacco, and drug companies... now they're after new blood. If robots ever get really popular, they'll be suing them next.
Now, don't get me wrong. There are plenty of good reasons to hold car companies, tobacco companies and drug companies accountable for things they've done. It's the lawsuits that happen when those companies did NOTHING wrong.... that ticks me off. (Well what a sec.... I find
The keys to stable software... (Score:2, Insightful)
* Tell users to stop asking for tons of new features in unrealistic timeframes.
* Tell software managers to actually give individual developers time to develop software the write way instead of insisting that they slam code out.
* Get compentent testers who can help catch any aggregious problems before it goes to market.
* Stop hiring assholes who just have certificates and get some degee holding professionals who actually know what the f*ck they are doing.
* Stop outsourcing to india where most pr
He's got a valid point (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you mean? (Score:4, Insightful)
So all in all it seems I expect MORE out of my software than my car.
They are different things, you really can't compare them.
Re:He's got a valid point (Score:3, Insightful)
In exchage for much more rapid development than other products. Cars today aren't hugely different than they were 20 years ago, when we were using DOS.
We'll take the "Google News" way out... (Score:5, Insightful)
Things will then just never make it out of beta, for fear of the law. If the software breaks "Tough luck, it's still in beta, what were you doing using it for mission critical work anyway?"
This "eternal beta" is also used to avoid other sorts of legal wrangling . The most obvious example is Google News - it's "beta" still because google is worried about capitalizing on other people's news content. While unrelated to software quality, because it's an "unfinished beta", it doesn't get sued out of existance.
So, welcome to using software versons 0.9.9 forever... I can't wait.
Re:We'll take the "Google News" way out... (Score:2)
This "eternal beta" is also used to avoid other sorts of legal wrangling . The most obvious example is Google News - it's "beta" still because google is worried about capitalizing on other people's news content. While unrelated to software quality, because it's an "unfinished beta", it doesn't get sued out of existance.
Ah but some French news sites were suing Google.
FaclonRe:We'll take the "Google News" way out... (Score:3, Informative)
You know that just because someone sticks the word "beta" next to a product, that doesn't actually remove any of the ethical or legal consequences for producing that product, right?
Nobody wants "perfect software" (yet) (Score:3, Insightful)
None of these demands fosters reliability. It fosters a frantic race to add features and ship stuff ASAP. Everyone seems caught in a massive vicious cycle of upgrades so that nothing ever stabilizes or matures.
Perhaps if/when people stop finding new uses, new formats, new file types, and new applications, then the industry will mature and people will turn their attention to stability and reliability.
Our Data:an appeal - a "Plimsoll line" for apps (Score:5, Insightful)
However relatively bad the security of Microsoft's products are in comparison to what the free licensed and open source communities ( as well as practically every other vendor on the planet ) provide, Microsoft is not alone in the presence of vulnerabilities, this is a major issue for Linux/BSD and Unix as well as ever other OS and vendor.
From the Plimsoll Club history [plimsoll.com]
The risks,issues and solutions for providing a more secure operating and application enviroment have been known for decades.
Those who do not already comprehend the issues and are willing to learn, should take some time out to listen to some of the speeches at Dr. Dobbs Journal's Technetcast security archives [ddj.com], starting with Meeting Future Security Challenges [ddj.com] by Dr. Blaine Burnham, Director, Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC) and previously with the National Security Agency (NSA)
The design and implementation of some applications and servers are just too unsafe to use in the "open ocean" of the internet.
Numerous security experts have railed against Microsoft's lack of security, best summed up by Bruce Schneier Founder and CTO Counterpane Internet Security, Inc who rightly said: [schneier.com]
However Microsoft's products are not alone in the presence of vulnerabilities, this is a major issue for Linux/BSD and Unix as well as any other OS and vendor.
In a recent speech "Fixing Network Security by Hacking the Business Climate", also now on Technetcast [ddj.com], Bruce Schneier claimed that for change to occur the software industry must become libel for damages from "unsecure" software
Re:Our Data:an appeal - a "Plimsoll line" for apps (Score:3, Insightful)
The abstract notion of a "Plimsoll line" for apps is very appealing, but the problem is that we really don't even know what the analogous standard would look like, much less where it should be drawn and how it should be enforced. Software isn't like boats or cars or bridges -- many small variations on a well-defined solution. There are commonalities between pieces of software, but the differences are huge. A payroll system is so different from an embedded RTOS as to make any kind of consistent standards
Open Source could do it (Score:2)
I have been wrong before but... (Score:2, Insightful)
I do, at least to the full extent of the law.
Expecting anything from someone who gave you free/free software isn't reasonable. The fact is, the licenses are there not only to save the developers necks but also to serve as a warning. When something says "AS IS"
amazing ignorance (Score:2, Informative)
shifting the goalposts (Score:2)
This second article says "people should write better code". Well, um, I disagree! Wait, no. Of course not. Yes, the quality of code should improve, and should always be improving.
The analogy to automobiles seems
wrong, wrong, wrong (Score:3, Insightful)
The best thing we can do to increase software quality is to hold the people responsible who can actually do something about it: the people who buy software.
If your Windows PC crashes and you lose data, that's your responsibility; you could have gotten something different.
If the bank's Microsoft-based database server has a serious security hole and someone breaks in and defrauds customers, then the bank should be held fully responsible for that; they shouldn't be able to shift responsibility to either Microsoft or the person who broke in. That will force institutions like banks to negotiate contracts with software vendors that ensure an appropriately high level of correctness. And there is no need to burden our courts with "hackers"--you won't be able to find and lock them all up, so locking up some of them is not a rational strategy for making computers secure.
In any case, if one wanted to, one could easily make legal distinctions betwen FOSS and Microsoft/Apple when it comes to liability. First, expert users generally have to accept a higher level of responsibility than non-experts. Arguably, FOSS users are, by definition, expert users. Also, for-pay software involves an actual sale, which can easily and sensibly be regulated differently from non-sale distribution when it comes to liability.
Re:wrong, wrong, wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
But what we have today is practically anarchy. There's no way of telling if a product will work properly, or will work at all, and software vendors are allowed to get away with that.
A middle ground here might be forced labeling. Require software vendors to place a label that, in a standard fashion, describes how safe the software is, whether it is guaranteed to work as labeled and advertised, and maybe something about the known defects it has, or estimated failure rate. Don't let the vendor hide this in the fine print. And then hold them to it with legal measures.
That way, if a piece of software is targeted for home use, the labeling should make it clear that it's going to have significant defects, and will fail at a high rate. You might have a more expensive variant for office use, with fewer defects. And then you might have a stripped down, very expensive version intended for critical applications, in hospitals or infrastructure. The end user can then choose which one they want to buy, and instead of feeding a market where the customer buys the cheapest product because they think all products are buggy, they can buy the product that meets their needs, with the assurance that they will have legal recourse if the product fails to meet the expectations indicated by labeling.
Not entirely new... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm currently writing some cryptographic code, and I intend to go considerably further: I intend to offer a guarantee not only that my code operates as specified, but also that it is not vulnerable to any side channel attacks within certain classes.
As the time-to-exploit of security flaws continually decreases, I see only one solution: Writing code which is correct in the first place. If you can do that, you can offer a guarantee. And hopefully once security becomes as larger issue to consumers, people will start looking for guarantees.
Re:Not entirely new... (Score:3, Informative)
Remeber IEFBR14 (Score:5, Informative)
Let us not forget the very modest program IEFBR14 - arguably the shortest
program ever written for use in a production environment. It ran on IBM's
System/360. (I rans it many times myself.) Its sole function was to
exit - nothing else. It was a whopping one machine instruction long - 2
bytes. It was even Open Source (BR14 is the assembly language version of
the instruction, which is the standard way programs exited). It was the
simplest possible program that one could write. If ever there was a
program that was going to be bug-free this was it!
It had a bug.
When a program exits on OS/360, it is expected to have set some bits to
indicate any errors. When a program is called, those bits are in an
unpredictable state. IEFBR14 had to be modified (doubling its length) to
clear the bits first.
Sigh...
Re:Remeber IEFBR14 (Score:3, Informative)
It's a lovely story of course
I just updated wikipedia with the counterclaim
http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tech/oreilly/more-ie
It's not worth the price (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, look at metafilter.com. That site goes down like a $2 hooker, yet it's so successful that the maintainer was able to quit his day job and support himself based on the site. People don't care.
Even when you get to a desktop OS back in the '90s, quality just wasn't that important. Would you rather pay $10,000 for an OS, or $90 and loose work once in a while.
If the cost of the lost work due to software errors is less then the cost of writing the code so that it works perfectly, then it's not worth doing. Sure, for some programmers there's not a tradeoff, but those programmers probably cost a lot more to pay then 90% of the coders out there (who are idiots, IMO, just look at the existence and popularity of Visual Basic).
When the cost of the error increases, you'll find much more stable software (like on medical equipment, airplanes, and so on).
The secretaries spreadsheet just ain't mission critical.
Of course, now that all computers are connected together, they need to be at least secure and not targets for worms and trogens, etc. I predict that we move towards web services, the software quality will get worse and worse, but people will just pay a sysadmin to sit there and reboot the machine whenever it goes down, so people won't notice everything...
Word Watch: "Unsustainable" (Score:3, Insightful)
Some potential bugs I found. (Score:2, Funny)
"it" is an unclear variable reference. Does the pronoun "it" refer to the call for software liabilty or the column itself? Also, the title of the column should be italicized, underlined, or capitalized for clarity. Finally, the phrase "a lot" is depreciated.
There is also a big difference between consumer software like
Auditing and openness (Score:3, Insightful)
Should every word processor be built in this way, with open specifications, norms and audits? I don't know. Now how about vote-tallying software?
Good software costs (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with bad software today -- just like it was thirty years ago -- is bad engineering. It's not because of the methodology du jour (or its absence), licensing, choice of language, or toolsets. You can write brilliant, bug-free, efficient software in COBOL using the basic procedural structured programming paradigm. You can write awful, buggy, resource-hungry software in object-oriented Java using XP. None of that shit matters.
Good engineering requires, among other things, a detailed understanding of the problem, thorough planning, the sheer experience required to distinguish between the clever and overcomplicated on one hand, and the lucid and elegant on the other, excellent communication between developers, foresight (also borne of experience), and rigorous debugging. All of these things, including the many other prerequisites not mentioned, require lots of time and effort. Too much time and effort, in fact, for most commercial software outfits to invest and still turn a profit.
That's the rub, really. All the methodology and language fads aside, the basic principles of good software engineering were worked out decades ago, and sometimes further -- good generic engineering practices in the abstract were worked out long before we harnessed electricity. It all comes down to this: the more time, effort, and care you put into a product, all other things being equal, the better the product will be. It's easy (and well-deserved) to mock Microsoft for the shoddiness of their major products, but that very shoddiness is why you can buy MS Word for less than ten grand. If MS built word processors the way engineers built the Golden Gate Bridge, the prices would be comparable.
The market does not reward that kind of quality. In the first place, no one is willing to pay thousands of dollars for a supremely excellent product when one that is good enough can be had for a couple hundred. Most folks couldn't afford that kind of software engineering even if they wanted it. In the second place, once you have the perfect all-in-one software package, why would you ever buy another one? Microsoft is in this position already with its good-enough products. No one needs an upgrade, so remaining profitable requires MS to churn out new versions of its increasingly resource-intensive operating system so that you at least have to buy new copies as you replace your older machines.
FOSS is at least theoretically invulnerable to these pressures. In theory, there will eventually be all-singing all-dancing FOSS packages covering all of the major software categories, and the age of commercial mass-market software will be at an end. I've been waiting for this day to come since well before the first release of Linux. I'm surprised that it hasn't come yet. I'm surprised that the majority of FOSS software is still as buggy, poorly designed, and -- almost without exception -- undocumented as its commercial equivalents.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Excellence in software engineering is like excellence in any other field: it's really fucking hard. It's even harder when you have a day job; time constraints aside, after 8-12 hours coding at work, the last thing many developers want to look at when they get home is compiler output. Many of the remainder are either amateurs or students -- not to diss either category, but often the necessary experience is lacking, and the lone hacker often lacks the knowledge or the inclination to produce code that's easy for other developers to work with. I remain confident that we'll get there, though. (I am less confident that I will still care by then, but it will still be a boon to those who live to see that day.) I am equally certain, for the reasons
Re:Good software costs (Score:2)
to have sufficient time and not be so lazy. it
make take 4 times what you normally think, and be boring as
all hell, but its totally possible.
let this be a lesson to all of you free marketeers..you know,
the invisible hand. here is a whole population of lazy whiny
bastards who provide almost no intrinsic value to anyone and
get paid more than most.
Re:Good software costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good software costs (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately the environment in the business world today prevents truly bug-free programming. A lot needs to change:
1 - Fire all the programmers and developers that can't program. We all know which ones in the group fit into this category. Unfortunately our bosses don't know. They're the ones that cause the majority of the bugs. They came into the industry just for money (pre-2000 bust) and they have no real feel for programming yet they know how to email the boss. Keep the ones that are naturals. The real code warriors. The good ones know when to code new source, when to copy old source, and how to clean up old source when they copy it into their new modules.
2 - Get rid of the bosses that don't know tech people. (i.e. the ones that don't know the difference from #1 above) The boss doesn't need to know tech (it does help) but they do need to know their people. They also need to know how to keep office politics and beauracracy away from their people.
3 - Get rid of separate New Development and Maintenance groups. People will code better when they know they will have to fix their own code when it goes into production. They will care more about stability instead of features. Also, a programmer learns the difference between good and bad coding techniques when they are forced to maintain both.
4 - After the requirements are requested and the specs/design is created don't let users change them. I can't change everything just because a user changes their mind. If I have to change, the release date is pushed back as if I just started the design today. I can't complete a program until you are done knowing what you want it to do.
5 - Procedural vs. Object Orientated programming. The huge developement debate. I admit I am biased toward Procedural programming. However, you should use whatever works better for your project. A GUI works better when you design using OOP, but when you need to crunch numbers on 10 million records procedural will work a lot better. I know a lot has been said about the poor code quality of OOP in particular, but if you get rid of the idiots in #1, the logic should be easy to follow.
6 - KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid - I used to work with someone very intelligent, but his code was terrible. He would program elaborate functions just to add two numbers together. My honest belief is that he tried to impress us with his "coding ability." If someone needs a simple program give them a simple program, don't redesign the wheel.
7 - Shoot and KILL everyone that sponsors or participates in a unreadable source code competition. (sorry personal peeve) We need to promote legible code with indenting and good, clear, and relevant variable naming.
8 - Quality. CMM, ISO, TQI. These are nothing more than BULLSH!T. While there some occasional insights coming from these "Quality" initiatives I disagree with most of the methods. Commenting and documenting your code is a good thing. Unfortunately, most of this initiatives are nothing more than feelgood bs for clueless management.
9 - Admins and Tech Writers. Hire all the good ones back. The improve our ability to code by letting us use admins to do the less technical aspects of our jobs. Their hourly cost is less than ours and by offloading some of our work to them we have more time to develop the system that managent wants done yesterday. This creates more cost effective development even though it raises headcount.
10 - Pay. Simple answer. You get what you pay for. If you offer good pay for good programmers you will get good code in return provided your managers need know their programmers (see #2 above)
11 - Overtime. Don't do it. An overworked, stressed developer is a poor quality developer. A little OT before a release isn't terrible, but 50+ hour weeks for months on end will cause poor code. Also, if a little OT before a release happens, compensate the developer with pay or comp time to make them happy.
12 - TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST TEST. Then test some more. Make sure your users test also. This is the most important step.
why not get third party insurance? (Score:2)
I don't think that we can simply say that the market has decided against software vendors accepting liability. Part of the problem is that so much software comes from Microsoft, which has refused to assume liability for its software. A company that tried to distinguish itself by selling a product that competed with Microsoft at a higher price in return for better quality assurance and a real warranty would probably not survive, not because people didn't like less buggy software with a warranty bug because
Software sucks because... (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. For nearly every case, if there are two available pieces of software (OSS or not), most people will choose the one that is more feature rich. Sure, those in a mission critical situation or the poor people that get to install and support the software long-term will demand quality and maintainability. But, those people are far outnumbered by the masses that use software casually.
So, given a limited set of resources, quality will always be just barely up to what people will tolerate. Yes, even in open source software. Example: Mozilla Thunderbird -- They have a feature schedule out right now. About half of the planned features are in the current build. Do you think they'll wait until the code is 99.99999% error free in all situations before comitting time to add features? They have no deadlines, no financial burdens, no one telling them to ship the software. Yet, they will ship it. If they don't, their user base will entirely desert them and switch to a horrible, buggy, alternative (probably Outlook Express). This is simply because people demand cool crap. That's why they buy half the crap they buy, that's why the US has a $250 billion trade deficit with China. We collectively love crap.
Make liability limit = price of software (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, let's have liability. The software must perform substantially as advertised - counting all advertisements, press releases, interviews given by publisher's officers, etc.. But make the amount of damages simply equal the price paid.
This would keep free-as-in-beer software in the clear. It would also have the side benefit of forcing Microsoft to reveal its OEM prices. :D
I like the source code as condition of immunity suggestion above too, but it would be futile without a licence like those the FSF approves, which would actually allow you to fix problems without violating copyrights and patents.
Analogy (Score:2)
Bugs and security holes can be as simple as a typo - e.g. if (uid = 0) { instead of if (uid == 0) {.
Now imagine that the BBC could get sued for every typo that made its way into their news articles. Sounds unappealing? That's essentially the standard this clown is holding software developers to.
Software insurance (Score:2, Interesting)
Software Brownshirts (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a very different thing that legislating mandatory guarantees on software. Yes, we SHOULD be working harder to improve the quality of our code. But not at the price of authoritarian government.
There are few things in life that are truly a free market, but software comes close. It's no surprise then that spoilsports want to come in and regulate it. That happens wherever freedom begins to bloom. Let me clue you in: the marketplace has decided on a low (as in almost non-existant) demand for guarantees and warranties on consumer software. It's not developers doing this, it's the users.
Re:Software Brownshirts (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me clue you in: the marketplace has decided on a low (as in almost non-existant) demand for guarantees and warranties on consumer software. It's not developers doing this, it's the users.
Which is precisely where regulatory practices are born. I can understand the general point you are making, however the statement "But not at the price of authoritarian government" is a little over the top. Name one regulartory control that seeks to govern quality rates that has not come about as a result of consumer
Gamble or hedge: the buyer knows best (Score:5, Insightful)
If you force programmers to carry the risk cost, you don't magically get bugfree code. You just delete the no-guarantees market. In effect you're forcing programmers to bundle insurance with every installation. "Free" disappears. "Libre" might survive in an attenuated form - edit "open source" and you become the liability carrier. You might do it in house, but few could afford to publish.
The guy points out that other industry sectors have this sort of law. Yup, they do, and I contend we're all worse off as a result. Amateurs are frozen out, because they can't afford to jump insurance hoops. Innovations are stifled. Saleable skills are wasted. Personal self-expression is denied. Even though all parties are willing, the law stands in between saying "no". This is nothing to emulate!
Nanny liberals would contend they are protecting buyers from risk. As an adult you have to accept that the universe has dangers. You can't wish it safe, and the utopia of your childhood was an illusion. Who then is best placed to decide when you should gamble and when hedge? Philosophically, no action can be said to be "better" or "worse" without a reference to a person whose goals it serves or thwarts. No person can know another's mind. Therefore, you alone are properly placed to weigh the options and decide on your own behalf. At best a law commands you to take your best choice. At worst, bans it. Neutral or harmful, and (given diversity) certain to be harmful to some. This is why regulation is never better than a free market, even in risk.
Re:Zero defect is attainable... (Score:2)
Re:Good License for Liability? (Score:2)
Re:What he fails to see (Score:2)