Software has a lot of power to influence people’s lives and to encourage social change. With great power comes great responsibility. It is up to individuals involved in building software to decide what is right, ethical and moral, and these are not easy decisions. This presentation considers the Code of Conduct adopted by Association for Computing Machinery, and of raises a number of ethical questions related to the fields of IT and software development. We will discuss real-world cases of software producers facing ethical dilemmas, and how these dilemmas can be approached. The topics include considerations of privacy and information sharing, failing to deliver a service, security vulnerabilities and bugs, and building software that encourages evil behavior.

1. ETHICS
in software development
Jane Prusakova
@jprusakova

2. Professional Code of Conduct
• What is right and proper?
• Questions of morality
• What should never be done?

3. Moral questions are hard
• IT is truly global
• Effects and results of a technology can occur far away and a long time
after its development
• Unintentional consequences can be significant

4. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Contribute to society and human well-being.
• Avoid harm to others.
• Be honest and trustworthy.
• Give proper credit for intellectual property.
• Respect the privacy of others. Honor confidentiality.

5. Technology and its consequences
• Dispensing drugs
• Testing automobiles
• Emissions
• Working brakes
• Transforming users and their data into product

6. Technology and its consequences

7. Ethical concerns
• Evil software
• software that is likely to do harm
• Data
• what to keep, what to publish, how to use
• Bugs
• is it OK to not fix a bug or vulnerability
• Quality
• is it acceptable to deliver poor or untested product

9. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Contribute to society and human well-being.
• Avoid harm to others.
• Be honest and trustworthy.
• Give proper credit for intellectual property.
• Respect the privacy of others. Honor confidentiality.

10. Software and hardware bugs
• What is the harm?
• Who was harmed,
if anyone?
• What is the ethical
course of actions?

11. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Contribute to society and human well-being.
• Avoid harm to others.
• Be honest and trustworthy.
• Give proper credit for intellectual property.
• Respect the privacy of others. Honor confidentiality.

12. Smart Listening devices
- Devices should “wake up” on specific word.
- Record audio and send out.
• Should this technology be trusted?
• What is the harm, if any?

13. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
• Contribute to society and human well-being.
• Avoid harm to others.
• Be honest and trustworthy.
• Give proper credit for intellectual property.
• Respect the privacy of others. Honor confidentiality.

14. Quiz: Cost of software piracy
$0
Millions of dollars
Poor developers’ livelihood

15. What is ethical?
• Pay attention to and give credit publicly to authors
• Learn and abide by licensing terms
• Challenge licensing terms through contract negotiations or in court
• Contribute to the community
• through open source,
• free closed source or
• proprietary software for purchase

16. Ethics of software products
• Does all software add to the good of the people?
• Is there “evil” software?
• Should we be concerned about software misuse leading to harm?
• Are we, developers, responsible for improper use?
• Is it OK for software to extend privileges to some people over others?
• Programmers have the power to decide who is “worthy”

17. Video jail visitation
- Leads to bans on in-person visits
- Limits accessibility of visitation
Encrypted communication makes
It harder for authorities to detect
Illegal and terrorist activities
Alt-right uses social networking sites
to spread their message.

18. Ethics of software development
practice
• Is it OK to fail and learn from mistakes?
• Is it ethical to require a “death march” from the
team?
• Is it acceptable to keep a high-performing
person who is otherwise hurting the team?

19. What ethical dilemmas
are you facing?

20. ETHICS
in software development
Jane Prusakova
@jprusakova