Michael Daconta at GCN has posted a brief call to arms for the software industry. Here’s the gist:
Although I am a believer in free markets and the benefits of competition, industry has a responsibility to work together on the foundational layers to build security, quality and reliability from the ground up to advance the professionalism of the field. In essence, the information technology industry must emulate other engineering disciplines, or technological disasters and cybersecurity holes will worsen.
Daconta is uneasy with the number of platforms and methods available to software developers, and sees ever-more options and disruptions in the near future; IPv6 and 64-bit computing seem to trouble him particularly. We’re already balkanized and disorganized, how can we possibly expect to produce reliable and useful software with all this messy innovation happening?
The answer, of course, is control. Lots of it. Specifically, three proposals:
- Licenses for software developers
- A new, reliable, layered software platform developed by the NSF and DARPA
- Treat software like engineering, not art.
Gracious. I barely know where to start. Let’s try to imagine the software development world in five years, with these proposals in place.
I'm the Chief Technology Strategist for the Red Hat US Public Sector group, an open source and free culture advocate, a picky drinker, an amateur aesthete, and a dog enthusiast.
