alt Hacker NewsThe ability to build reliable software has existed for a long time. Commercial airlines make heavy use of it, and serious failures are vanishingly rare.
The problem is building software to those standards of reliability is expensive and slow. Consumer software never justifies it. Business software rarely does. If you want me to accept liability for the consequences of bugs in code I write, I'm giving you a schedule five times as long and a price twenty times as high.
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>Commercial airlines make heavy use of it, and serious failures are vanishingly rare.
Is this a joke? There's a major outage effecting flights at least yearly. The Delta one is from May...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Southwest_Airlines_schedu... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/airline-news/2026/05/0...
And your mindset is the problem.
It does not need 100% error free anything. Hell, our food and goods we buy has error rates. Recalls, replacements, etc. Mistakes happen.
Liability is about taking responsibility for your stuff you emit. And the fact that software companies are getting worse shows me that there isn't any sort of maturity in this industry.
You can't even buy a fucking game without it being encrusted in anti-user DRM. And even on MS Windows with a Windows game that doesn't run, there is no basic warranty of "does this thing run?" You're basically shit outta luck if it doesn't. And if you bought it on Steam, better not charge back or they delete your account as a vengeance response. And lack of any liability and responsibility is why they can.
Its also a whole other thing to then rely on said software for correctness. That's what 'limited liability' is all about. If you need heavier liability, then sure, reach out and pay for it.
But the fact that software has gone from 'No Liability' to 'for entertainment purposes only' is a fucking farce for the software industry.