An excellent book review on Salon today concerning a new book on network security and its inevitable failure by Brendon I. Koerner. The review touches on one of my more frequent complaints about computer software in general:

There are an average of five to 15 bugs in every thousand lines of code, which means that Windows 98 is riddled with somewhere between 90,000 and 270,000 oopsies. Since software vendors cannot be held liable for faulty code, thanks to those licenses they make users agree to, they have zero incentive to create better products — much to the delight of computer criminals, who revel in exploiting bug-ridden programs.

This is a slight overstatement. In theory at least, software developers attempt to improve their code so they don’t lose out to competing developers. Nonetheless, it has always seemed bizarre to me that a user is required to sign a licensing agreement before they have ever used the program. Can you imagine any other industry operating this way? “Sure we’ll sell you this car. But first please sign this agreement stating you won’t sue us when something goes wrong. Would you like Firestone tires with that?”

I certainly don’t pretend to know how things should work, but it seems clear to me that any industry which has an exemption from customers taking it to task for failing to live up to its own promises will not produce as high quality a product as it would otherwise.