Re:Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Softw...
by GordonS on Monday August 10, 2020 @12:55PM
(#24111357)
Where do you draw the line though? Does everyone employed in any capacity at any kind of business have to take an oath?
It seems to me that if everyone has to promise to do no evil, the meaning of such oaths would become diluted.
Re:Microsoft President: We Need a Hippocratic Oath for Softw...
by mcv on Monday August 10, 2020 @03:40PM
(#24113197)
Do all those businesses have a problem with unethical behaviour causing serious problems in society?
Doctors, bankers and apparently software engineers have a pretty big impact on society, and often in ways that aren't very transparent to most other people. It's quite possible there are other professions that have a similar impact, but I'm pretty sure it's not all.
I think registered accountants also have some sort of oath, again because various stakeholders including society as a whole has to be able to trust them.
After the 2008 mortgage crisis, Netherland required everybody working at banks to take the banker's oath, which is mostly about balancing the interests of the 4 main stakeholders of the bank: shareholders, customers, employee, and society. It's pretty broad, it doesn't magically fix everything, but it does make everybody more aware of their responsibilities. Maybe software companies should require something similar, where everybody needs to be aware of their responsibilities towards, well, primarily user data, I guess. And that goes for not just software engineers themselves, but for everybody involved in the process.