[photonbeam]

Need to make software developers legally liable like other engineers, that will cause a huge behavioral shift

[avgDev]

IMO, if you want to write code for anything mission critical you should need some kind of state certification, especially when you are writing code for stuff that is used by govt., hospitals, finance etc.

[layer8]

Certifications by themselves don’t help if the culture around them doesn’t change. Otherwise it’s just rubber-stamping.

[morgante]

Certifications and compliance regimes are what got us into this mess in the first place.

[hnick]

I think that could cause a huge shift away from contributing to or being the maintainer of open source software. It would be too risky if those standards were applied and they couldn't use the standard "as is, no warranties" disclaimers.

[salawat]

Actually, no it wouldn't, as the licensire would likely be tied with providing the service on a paid basis to others. You could write or maintain any codebase you want. Once you start consuming it for an employer though, the licensure kicks in.

Paid/subsidized maintainers may be a different story though. But there absolutely should be some level of teeth and stake wieldable by a professional SWE to resist pushes to "just do the unethical/dangerous thing" by management.

[dclowd9901]

I’d be ok with this so long as 1) there are rules about what constitutes properly built software and 2) there are protections for engineers who adhere to these rules