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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