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.'" Taking On Software Liability - Again Log in/Create an Account | Top | 197 comments (Spill at 50!) | Index Only | Search Discussion Display Options Threshold: -1: 197 comments 0: 190 comments 1: 160 comments 2: 111 comments 3: 42 comments 4: 21 comments 5: 14 comments Flat Nested No Comments Threaded Oldest First Newest First Highest Scores First Oldest First (Ignore Threads) Newest First (Ignore Threads) The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way. yeah by jomynow (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @08:40PMRe:yeah by daveed (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:42PMRe:yeah by Red Alastor (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:05PMRe:yeah-Computer Snafus by jomynow (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @11:02PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. Then let him do it. (Score:5, Insightful) by BoomerSooner (308737) on Sunday October 09, @08:41PM (#13753441) (http://www.soonersports.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday March 13, @04:39PM) I've got an idea. For non-software developers with great ideas. You program some piece of software for 5 years and then warranty against any bugs or failures. Oh btw, it must be priced competitively with current offerings. This guy can go wank himself in a corner somewhere. Perfect software doesn't exist. If you want something done right, your best bet is to do it internally to your company instead of outsourcing. Walmart is a perfect example. Do it right with people that feel they have ownership in the software they are creating and you'll get a better product. Plus, Arkansas (and my state too) are like Bangladesh anyway in the wages paid to software developers. [ Reply to ThisRe:Then let him do it. by MaskedSlacker (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @08:45PMRe:Then let him do it. by swillden (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:41PMRe:Then let him do it. by Goonie (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:51PMRe:Then let him do it. by MaskedSlacker (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:55PMRe:Then let him do it. by swillden (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @11:15PMRe:Then let him do it. by Anonymous Brave Guy (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @11:35PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Bullshit by EmbeddedJanitor (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @08:49PMRe:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:04PMRe:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:23PMMore reasons by alan_dershowitz (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @11:32PMRe:More reasons by Reziac (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:35AMRe:Bullshit by timmarhy (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:06PMRe:Bullshit by servognome (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:38PMRe:Bullshit by timmarhy (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @10:48PMRe:Bullshit by shmlco (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:46AM1 reply beneath your current threshold. Re:Bullshit (Score:4, Insightful) by interiot (50685) on Sunday October 09, @09:37PM (#13753681) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Interiot) Bug free software is possible, so long as it is done right and people are prepared to pay for it. 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? [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Bullshit by Anonymous Brave Guy (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:40PMRe:Bullshit by Anonymous Coward (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @10:02PMRe:Bullshit by ZenShadow (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:25AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:Bullshit by narrowhouse (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @10:23PM Software IS different (Score:5, Interesting) by Midnight Thunder (17205) on Sunday October 09, @10:34PM (#13753908) (http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Saturday February 05, @04:50AM) I thought about this the other day, asking myself why we can't have the same approach in software development as bridge building, or other engineering disciplines. The difference seems to be that of prototypes. When you build a bridge you create a prototype, test it as much as possible, tweak it where necessary and let the cycle continue until there is a working solution. Once that is done you are ready to build the bridge, based on specifications that in a certain sense are easier to follow than what software does.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. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Software IS different by Anonymous Brave Guy (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:50PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Complex Algorithmic Code Is Unreliable by MOBE2001 (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @11:12PMRe:Bullshit by Maxo-Texas (Score:3)Monday October 10, @12:08AMRe:Then let him do it. by ucblockhead (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:46PMAnyone can do it... by shmlco (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:06PMRe:Then let him do it. by Free_Meson (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:48PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. There's more to it than just the code (Score:5, Insightful) by Namronorman (901664) on Sunday October 09, @08:42PM (#13753448) (Last Journal: Wednesday October 05, @10:49PM) This guy sounds like he's just full of hot air because of a bad Norton AV installation. If one program causes something "devastating" to happen, who is to decide that it's not the user's fault, the compiler's fault, the programmer's fault, the OS creator's fault (and if it's OSS, who's package etc?), or the hardware's fault? The computer world if full of many variables and I don't see this happening anytime soon, though with recent laws you never know. [ Reply to ThisRe:There's more to it than just the code by DAldredge (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:13PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Re:There's more to it than just the code by Anonymous Coward (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:15PMRe:There's more to it than just the code by kannibal_klown (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @11:01PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Error-free software... by hummassa (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @08:44PM Re:Error-free software... (Score:4, Interesting) by Concerned Onlooker (473481) on Sunday October 09, @09:27PM (#13753643) (Last Journal: Sunday August 07, @02:30PM) A couple of quarters ago I was taking a software engineering course. Our instructor told the story of a debugging competition which used a mature piece of software that was known to be error-free for the test case. A fixed amount of bugs were then introduced into the code and the teams all had a crack at it. At least one of the teams found bugs in the code that were not the ones intentionally introduced. I'm paraphrasing here, but in other words they took a piece of software that they knew to be bug free due to its having been intensely examined by many programmers, yet another bug or two was found.Truly error free is not a likely state for software. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:Error-free software... by fbjon (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:58PMRe:Error-free software... by nmb3000 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:14PMError-free software is possible by MOBE2001 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:19PM The Market Decides (Score:5, Insightful) by the eric conspiracy (20178) on Sunday October 09, @08:46PM (#13753462) The fact is that the market has already decided the answer to this. People buy the least expensive software they can get away with. If the application is unreliable enough to regularly lose data it gets flushed out of the market. If it works well enough and is for the desktop it becomes popular. If it is used in critical applications where data loss is not tolerated they you have stuff like Oracle which people pay $50,000 per CPU for. [ Reply to ThisRe:The Market Decides by Husgaard (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:06PMRe:The Market Decides by shutdown -p now (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:03PMRe:The Market Decides by rtb61 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:40PMRe:The Market Decides by idlake (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:21PMRe:The Market Decides by Lucractius (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:32PMRe:The Market Decides by llefler (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:33PMRe:The Market Decides by ZenShadow (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:38AMRe:The Market Decides by falconwolf (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:56PM1 reply beneath your current threshold. he is full of shit (Score:5, Funny) by Lehk228 (705449) <ender86187@yahoo.com> on Sunday October 09, @08:47PM (#13753463) (http://www.cafepress.com/lehk) There is also a big difference between consumer software like word processors and web browsers, and the massive information systems used internally in large companies. 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. [ Reply to This author is obviously unfamiliar with free software (Score:5, Insightful) by twitter (104583) on Sunday October 09, @08:48PM (#13753468) (Last Journal: Thursday January 27, @09:41PM) it will probably mean that commercially-available code is more expensive and cause major problems for free and open source software developers. 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? [ Reply to ThisRe:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa by Anonymous Coward (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:09PM Re:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa (Score:4, Insightful) by Xugumad (39311) on Sunday October 09, @09:40PM (#13753691) And you get modded down. Genius.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? [ Reply to This | Parent Re:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa (Score:4, Insightful) by twitter (104583) on Sunday October 09, @10:23PM (#13753862) (Last Journal: Thursday January 27, @09:41PM) 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.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. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa by syousef (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:16AMRe:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa by Vicissidude (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:29AMRe:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa by Derek Pomery (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:26PMRe:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa by llefler (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:51PMRe:author is obviously unfamiliar with free softwa by Detritus (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:22PM4 replies beneath your current threshold. liability iff no source (Score:5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday October 09, @08:49PM (#13753476) I've said this years ago: software liability should apply on programs you pay for but for which you don't get the source. If money you pay goes to make something you don't have source level control over then that implies the vendor thinks its of sufficient quality that you, the end user, should not have to fix it. If you get the source then there is no guarantee and the distributor should have no liability. This doesn't mean you have to have the right to re-distribute the source -- but you have to have the right to re-build it using commonly available tools so liability can't be limited to one "magic" libarary. [ Reply to ThisSo you assume everyone can write code? by xswl0931 (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:58PMRe:So you assume everyone can write code? by compm375 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:49PM Re:So you assume everyone can write code? (Score:4, Funny) by xswl0931 (562013) on Sunday October 09, @10:50PM (#13753972) If someone gave you a free frig and it ends up burning your house down, I guess you would still find that acceptable. [ Reply to This | ParentRe:So you assume everyone can write code? by tedmg09130913 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @11:05PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.least content ... EVER! by jonastullus (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @08:50PM Shouldn't this be handled by supply and demand? (Score:5, Interesting) by Captain Perspicuous (899892) on Sunday October 09, @08:54PM (#13753496) [ ] vendor guarantees that software works as advertisedcould 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..." [ Reply to This Great (Score:5, Insightful) by LWATCDR (28044) on Sunday October 09, @08:57PM (#13753505) (Last Journal: Tuesday March 22, @09:08PM) The Lawyers will love it. They will launch massive class action law suites and will make millions. If you are part of that class action you will get one dollar.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. [ Reply to ThisRe:Great by BeerMilkshake (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:10PMRe:Great by deanj (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:19PMRe:Great by (H)elix1 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:29PMThe keys to stable software... by borgheron (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @08:57PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Legislation by beaver1024 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @08:57PMfree software by Anonymous Coward (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @08:59PM He's got a valid point (Score:5, Insightful) by MerlynDavis (637066) on Sunday October 09, @09:02PM (#13753526) The author has a point here. We accept a lot more ... "bugginess" in software than we do in any other product (Cars, Banks, Tools, etc.) And it's pretty much become the norm that if there are problems, folks just shrug, claim it's just software and move on.But if the folks building bank vaults left as many holes in their products as software, people would be screaming bloody murder.I've done software development as a hobby myself, and don't release my code to the public, because I know it's not even up to my own standards of stability, reliability, security.Programmers/developers need to take more time with their products, and think security & reliability from the start of a project, not as an afterthought.With as many products requiring patches within the first couple weeks of release, consumers do need to start getting angry about this stuff. Or, at the very least, start challenging software companies when the products they do release require more MB in patches than the software was originally.... [ Reply to ThisRe:He's got a valid point by Cave_Monster (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:31PM2 replies beneath your current threshold. We'll take the "Google News" way out... (Score:5, Insightful) by bbk (33798) on Sunday October 09, @09:03PM (#13753529) Ah, so he wants people who right software to guarentee their work?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. [ Reply to ThisRe:We'll take the "Google News" way out... by falconwolf (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:25PMRe:We'll take the "Google News" way out... by Anonymous Brave Guy (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:01AM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Nobody wants "perfect software" (yet) by G4from128k (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:05PM Our Data:an appeal - a "Plimsoll line" for apps (Score:5, Insightful) by NZheretic (23872) on Sunday October 09, @09:06PM (#13753541) (Last Journal: Wednesday April 28, @01:06AM) By myself [slashdot.org] from June 14 2002 [google.com] However relatively bad the security of Microsoft's products are incomparison 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 isa major issue for Linux/BSD and Unix as well as ever other OS andvendor. From the Plimsoll Club history [plimsoll.com] Samuel Plimsoll brought about one of the greatest shipping revolutions ever known by shocking the British nation into making reforms which have saved the lives of countless seamen. By the mid-1800's, the overloading of English ships had become a national problem. Plimsoll took up as a crusade the plan of James Hall to require that vessels bear a load line marking indicating when they were overloaded, hence ensuring the safety of crew and cargo. His violent speeches aroused the House of Commons; his book, Our Seamen, shocked the people at large into clamorous indignation. His book also earned him the hatred of many ship owners who set in train a series of legal battles against Plimsoll. Through this adversity and personal loss, Plimsoll clung doggedly to his facts. He fought to the point of utter exhaustion until finally, in 1876, Parliament was forced to pass the Unseaworthy Ships Bill into law, requiring that vessels bear the load line freeboard marking. It was soon known as the "Plimsoll Mark" and was eventually adopted by all maritime nations of the world. The risks,issues and solutions for providing a more secureoperating and application enviroment have been known for decades. Those who do not already comprehend the issues and are willing tolearn, should take some time out to listen to some of the speechesat 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 SecurityCenter (GTISC) and previously with the National Security Agency(NSA) The design and implementation of some applications and servers arejust too unsafe to use in the "open ocean" of the internet.Numerous security experts have railed against Microsoft's lack ofsecurity, best summed up by Bruce Schneier Founder and CTOCounterpane Internet Security, Inc who rightly said: [schneier.com] Honestly, security experts don't pick on Microsoft because wehave some fundamental dislike for the company. Indeed, Microsoft'spoor products are one of the reasons we're in business. We pick onthem because they've done more to harm Internet security thananyone else, because they repeatedly lie to the public about theirproducts' security, and because they do everything they can toconvince people that the problems lie anywhere but insideMicrosoft. Microsoft treats security vulnerabilities as publicrelations problems. Until that changes, expect more of this kindof nonsense from Microsoft and its products. (Note to Gartner: Thevulnerabilities will come, a couple of them a week, for years andyears...until people stop looking for them. Waiting six monthsisn't going to make this OS safer.) However Microsoft's products are not alone in the presence ofvulnerabilities, this is a major issue for Linux/BSD andUnix as well as any other OS and vendor.In a recent speech "Fixing Network Security by Hacking theBusiness Climate", also now on Technetcast [ddj.com]Read the rest of this comment... [ Reply to ThisRe:Our Data:an appeal - a "Plimsoll line" for apps by swillden (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:25PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Bugs in software are a given by hattig (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:06PMRe:Bugs in software are a given by hattig (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:47PMRe:Insects in software are a given by hattig (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:10PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.numb nuts by chewy_fruit_loop (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:07PMRe:numb nuts by Cave_Monster (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:37PMRe:numb nuts by Crunchie Frog (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:19PMOpen Source could do it by QuantumG (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:08PMI have been wrong before but... by Afecks (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:10PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.amazing ignorance by youngjohn14 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:14PMshifting the goalposts by sdedeo (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:15PMRe:shifting the goalposts by Maxo-Texas (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:30AMwrong, wrong, wrong by idlake (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:17PMRe:wrong, wrong, wrong by Fastolfe (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @10:36PM"Cheap, on time, bug-free, works. Pick two." by Reziac (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:57AMRe:wrong, wrong, wrong by CupBeEmpty (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:39PMRe:wrong, wrong, wrong by MP3Chuck (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:52AMbad analogies for software engineering by PMoonlite (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:23PMNear perfect software is possible by JoeGTN1 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:23PMRe:Near perfect software is possible by Cave_Monster (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:43PMRe:Near perfect software is possible by JoeGTN1 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @11:19PM Not entirely new... (Score:5, Interesting) by cperciva (102828) on Sunday October 09, @09:24PM (#13753629) (http://www.daemonology.net/) Dan Bernstein has offered a guarantee for many years that djbdns and qmail are secure. Now, this is a rather vague guarantee, since the task of deciding if a reported problem is a security flaw lies with Dan Bernstein himself; but it's a start.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. [ Reply to ThisRe:Not entirely new... by slashflood (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:12PMRe:Not entirely new... by Alwin Henseler (Score:1)Monday October 10, @12:09AM Remeber IEFBR14 (Score:4, Informative) by sk999 (846068) on Sunday October 09, @09:24PM (#13753631) Making bug-free software is much harder than anyone can imagine.Let us not forget the very modest program IEFBR14 - arguably the shortestprogram ever written for use in a production environment. It ran on IBM'sSystem/360. (I rans it many times myself.) Its sole function was toexit - nothing else. It was a whopping one machine instruction long - 2bytes. It was even Open Source (BR14 is the assembly language version ofthe instruction, which is the standard way programs exited). It was thesimplest possible program that one could write. If ever there was aprogram 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 toindicate any errors. When a program is called, those bits are in anunpredictable state. IEFBR14 had to be modified (doubling its length) toclear the bits first.Sigh... [ Reply to ThisRe:Remeber IEFBR14 by Yojimbo-San (Score:1)Monday October 10, @12:00AMIt's not worth the price by autopr0n (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:24PMRe:It's not worth the price by grcumb (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:30PMGood License for Liability? by xfmr_expert (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:26PMRe:Good License for Liability? by Lehk228 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:33PMZero defect is attainable... by rayh911 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:32PMRe:Zero defect is attainable... by Detritus (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:28PMRe:Zero defect is attainable... by rayh911 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @11:56PMRe:Zero defect is attainable... by rayh911 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @11:47PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.Word Watch: "Unsustainable" by The Famous Brett Wat (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:32PMSome potential bugs I found. by Anonymous Coward (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @09:33PMWho is this stupid f***er? by wcrowe (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:45PM1 reply beneath your current threshold.What he fails to see by CaroKann (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @09:47PMRe:What he fails to see by Lehk228 (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:35PMAuditing and openness by cicho (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @09:51PM Good software costs (Score:5, Interesting) by Angst Badger (8636) on Sunday October 09, @09:56PM (#13753752) First off, I should issue a disclaimer that I'm an oldbie. I started programming in assembly language on punch cards, but no, this isn't going to be a rant about youngsters and their newfangled languages. (At least it better not be; my current job has me living, breathing, and eating PHP.) 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 reasonsRead the rest of this comment... [ Reply to ThisRe:Good software costs by convolvatron (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:28PMRe:Good software costs by Maxo-Texas (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:24AMRe:Good software costs by Totally_Lost (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:49PMRe:Good software costs by Tjp($)pjT (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:16PMWord defendants by foo23 (Score:1)Monday October 10, @12:01AMwhy not get third party insurance? by belmolis (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:01PM Software sucks because... (Score:4, Insightful) by Jaime2 (824950) on Sunday October 09, @10:02PM (#13753782) people demand that it sucks.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. [ Reply to ThisMake liability limit = price of software by quentin_quayle (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:09PMAnalogy by Bogtha (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:10PMDifferences between Physical Items and Software by Tenzen01 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:29PMImpossible to manage the complexity today by Totally_Lost (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:32PMHuh? by Bewbewbew (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:36PMfeaturitis and make-it-pretty increase costs by davidwr (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:36PMHas anyone here heard of D)-178B Level A? by xquark (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:39PMRe:Has anyone here heard of D)-178B Level A? by Ada_Rules (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:07PMRe:Has anyone here heard of D)-178B Level A? by xquark (Score:1)Monday October 10, @12:14AMNarrowminded non-programmers by TheSkepticalOptimist (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:47PMSoftware insurance by click2005 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:48PMSoon software will be like cars... by RexRhino (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:49PMTo many variables in the computer tool... by 3seas (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @10:52PMBadly argued, badly thought out article by timbo234 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:57PMEcon 101 by LordKazan (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:04PMRe:Econ 101 by Chris Snook (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:18PMWe are trying to improve it.... by askegg (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @11:05PMwell, ya..... by zogger (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @11:05PMRe:well, ya..... by The Cisco Kid (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:19AMError less code by LibertarianWackJob (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @11:07PMEliminating necessity by supabeast! (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:07PMSoftware Brownshirts by Arandir (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:15PMRe:Software Brownshirts by joelsanda (Score:3)Sunday October 09, @11:46PMOk, fine... by clambake (Score:2)Sunday October 09, @11:31PMCars are a bad analogy by K.B.Zod (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @11:42PMGood luck getting software by tsotha (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:26AMGamble or hedge: the buyer knows best by Julian Morrison (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:26AMOh, be real . . . by werdna (Score:2)Monday October 10, @12:29AMThere's Only One Liability by zod2008 (Score:1)Monday October 10, @12:31AMRe:LINUX USERS. by hvatum (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @08:56PMYuck! by sk999 (Score:1)Sunday October 09, @10:23PM