smoony

Yup! It just concerns me since this topic has a lot of great discussion but many people are missing the distinction between different types of effects. Sorry if I misunderstood what you were saying! For others who are confused what I mean...

Consider:

The person who makes a car that someone uses to kill someone by running a bystander over. The engineer isn't responsible.

The person who messed up the Prius with the issues where the gas pedal or whatever didn't work. The engineer IS responsible.

The first example is analogous to a software engineer writing image recognition software for a safety app. Then someone maliciously taking the software and using it to discriminate via misuse. The engineer is NOT responsible. If someone takes your software (could even be open source) and applies it or modifies it in a malicious way they are responsible not the engineer.

The second is example is where if an engineer makes a widget app and has a vulnerability but signs off on it, and then widget purchaser credit card info is stolen. The engineer is responsible for negligence and should be liable for the misuse.

I literally signed up for HN, something I've been uninterested in doing, just because of this comment.

Saying that engineers need to make responsible decisions in their software design is one thing. But you imply that misuse is a liability for the designer? So if someone takes an engineer's code and modifies it for malicious intent the engineer is liable? That's absurd.

That's like saying the person who designed the airplanes used in 9/11 are partially liable for 9/11.