IP: re: Software Engineering, Dijkstra, and Hippocrates: ]

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 17:03:49 -0400
> To: farber () cis upenn edu, ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com
> From: Brad Cox <bcox () virtualschool edu>
> Subject: Re: IP: Software Engineering, Dijkstra, and Hippocrates: [risks]
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"
>
> > > Subject: Software Engineering, Dijkstra, and Hippocrates
> > > In it, he states "I would therefore like to posit that computing's central
> > > challenge 'How not to make a mess of it,' has *not* been met."
>
> Its worse even than that. We haven't even started down the road that
> mechanical or civil engineers followed to achieve their vaunted
> maturity. We don't even seem to think that this road is even
> applicable to software engineering. I'm referring to Open Source and
> the angst on this list whenever someone proposes to take intellectual
> property rights seriously.
>
> Imagine a Honda engineer proposing to mine his own ore and refine his
> own steel, or a civil engineer proposing a new home-brewed kind of
> concrete. But building from first principles is routine for "software
> engineers". Why? Being made of bits and not atoms, software can be
> copied so easily it undercuts the market economics that underlie the
> maturity of other domains.
>
> See the link in the signature for my modest efforts to change this.
> --
> ---
> For industrial age goods there were checks and credit cards.
> For everything else there is mybank.dom. See http://virtualschool.edu/mybank
> Brad Cox, PhD; bcox () virtualschool edu 703 361 4751



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