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From: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Programmer Licensing?
Keywords: software safety, government regulation
Message-ID: <4600@ae.sei.cmu.edu>
Date: 20 Oct 89 17:03:03 GMT
References: <39400056@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <242@cherry5.UUCP>
Reply-To: rsd@sei.cmu.edu (Richard S D'Ippolito)
Organization: Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, PA
Lines: 23

In article <242@cherry5.UUCP> murphyn@cell.mot.COM (Neal P. Murphy) writes:

=I abhor the idea of licensing programmers:  either it will be another piece
=of worthless paper one must pay $50 to receive, or we will all become
=bogged down in bureaucratic paperwork.  The latter would be an effective
=cure for software ills, since we would be too busy filling out forms to get
=any software written!  Voila!  No more software bugs!  Seriously, I don't
=see the need for any government meddling.  The software engineering
=community is pretty much self-regulating.  Besides, a government mandate
=would not have eliminated those errors.
=
=NPN

How is this argument different from the one used against licensing of other
professionals, such as engineers, plumbers, and beauticians?

Rich

-- 
We use kill ratios to measure how the war is going.
We use SLOC ratios to measure how our software is coming.
(Idea from Gary Seath)                                        rsd@sei.cmu.edu
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