Enterprise computer users including General Motors, AT&T and Alcoa (an aluminium producer) are bundling their forces to have software vendors accept liability for the software that they sell, reports The Wall Street Journal (paid subscription).

If successful, the lobby would mean the end of an era in which companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM and Oracle can hide behind software licenses that severely limit a user's right to expect a product that does what it promises to do.

It's always struck me as amazing, but the software industry so far has gotten away with providing abysmal service without taking even a bit of responsibility.

"Can you imagine if GM produced a vehicle and said, 'We did a pretty good job of engineering this. It worked in the laboratory. Here it is, consumer, you go crash-test it,'" asks Eric Litt, chief information-security officer in GM's information-systems and services unit in the Wall Street journal story. "We wouldn't accept that as a society."

As a result of the limited liabilities, we have created the weirdest of situations: if a software vendor messes up, he can force his customer to buy an upgrade to correct his mistake. Economics 101tells you that this picture is plainly wrong because it gives the vendor an incentive to create crappy code.

Change here is long overdue.

24 Feb 2005