Re: Another book

From: Ray Dillinger (bear_at_sonic.net)
Date: 04/08/04 

Date: Thu, 08 Apr 2004 17:06:37 GMT

Tayssir John Gabbour wrote:
>

> If onshore programmers agitate for legislation against buggy/insecure
> programs, I would think offshorers would be penalized
> disproportionately. Because every need for tighter communication
> attacks their main weakness -- worse communication channels. It
> should noticeably affect their cost advantage.

Oh, please. This market-protection crap doesn't work, any more than
it worked for detroit when they were asking for safety regs to keep
foreign carmakers out of the US markets. They got their safety regs
(with a little shove from Ralph Nader's consumer advocacy crew, which
they largely funded), the foreign carmakers were better at meeting
them than detroit was, and they got saddled with strict liability
into the bargain.

This sort of thing inevitably leads to licensing of programmers, or a
"guild" or something like that - and I don't think that's the best of
ideas. As a creative art, programming benefits from radical weirdos
with new ideas, and those are exactly the sort of people who won't be
licensed or admitted to the guild.

Also, code is speech. I don't think that a prior restraint on speech
is a good thing from a civil-liberties point of view.

                                Bear

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