> Civil engineering and medical device manufacturing seems to be doing fine, despite having similar principles of engineers' liability.
The idea that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice is several orders of magnitude beyond the level of liability that civil engineers and medical device manufacturers have.
> that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice
Nobody said that. The original comment said developers should be held "accountable for a crime that if committed directly by a person would almost certainly result in jail time" [1].
The standards from medical devices and/or civil engineering, with the associated licensing requirements and verification processes, make sense. Even in the case of a careless mistake or strategic oversight, individuals who could have known but nevertheless signed off should be identified, if not explicitly punished.
> > that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice
> Nobody said that.
Well, they quite literally did, because the original comment in this thread was:
> We need to discuss how the developers self-driving cars will be held accountable for the crimes they commit. There is no reason the person who programs or the person who makes money from a self-driving car should be held less accountable for a crime that if committed directly by a person would almost certainly result in jail time. You can’t replace yourself with a computer program and then choose to take only the benefits and not the responsibilities.
I guess you can quibble about the difference between "accountable" and "liable", but that's not a discussion that's particularly interesting to have here, especially given OP's other comments in this thread which make it quite clear that this is what they had in mind.
The quibble in this case would be the meaning of "developers." In the case of a medical device, the developer is considered to be the Manufacturer, not the specific software developers on the team. Considering how often teams change, etc., using the latter definition would be meaningless.
The idea that software engineers should be held responsible for something that (as far as we can tell so far) was an accident and not the result of negligence or malice is several orders of magnitude beyond the level of liability that civil engineers and medical device manufacturers have.