Social and ethical issues Rights and responsibilities of software developers Rights refer to entitlements that are due to them e. g. how other people use and duplicate their products. Responsibilities is the need for software developers to be accountable of reliability, virus free, etc towards the user •Authorship oRefers to ownership of a particular piece of work, the author has rights in regard to reproduction and distribution of their work •Reliability oPurchasers have rights to expect the product to consistently perform the required tasks efficiently and without error.
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Developers should consider these factors to ensure maximum reliability: ? Hardware ?Operating System ?Other software ?Runtime errors •Quality oFinally quality is an important responsibility for developers. A good quality product will meet the program requirements in an efficient way. Quality assurance is a set of procedures used to certify that a generated product meets specified criteria with respect to quality and reliability •Response to Problems oDevelopers have a responsibility to ensure that any problems users encounters with their products are resolved in a timely, accurate and efficient manner, e. g. he developer refund or inform the customer. •Code of Conduct oAn official agreement describing ethical and moral obligations of the developer. •Viruses oSoftware that deliberately produces some undesirable or unwanted result. Developers have a responsibility to ensure their products do not contain viruses. Software Piracy and Copyright Software piracy is the criminal act of illegally copying and use of software. •Intellectual property oIntellectual property is something that belongs to your mind or intellect. Purchasing a software product does not give you the ownership rights but the customer just purchases a licence to use the software. Plagiarism oThe process of claiming authorship of an intellectual property. •Shareware oDistributed free on a trial basis, once tested and decided to use it you must pay for it. Covered by copyright laws •Public Domain oDoes not carry and copyright restrictions i. e. can be copied, modified •Freeware oCan be distributed freely, as long as it’s not for profit. •Ownership vs. Licensing oOwnership implies that you have the rights to do as you with the software. Licence agreements specify the legal framework the program can be used. The customer does not own the software but a license to use the software.
The licence agreement is the contract between the end user and developer. •Copyright Laws oAre in place to safeguard the legal rights of authors of any original works. Copyright gives the exclusive rights to licence others. •Reverse/Backwards Engineering oAnalysing a product and its parts to understand how it works and to recreate its original design, usually with the purpose of creating a similar product based on this design. •Decompilation oThe opposite of compilation. Translating machine executable code into low level source code. This allows the programmers design to be more easily understood by a software engineer •License conditions Off-the-shelf software packages contains a single user licence, enables the customer to install the software on one computer. Site licences are allowed to be installed on a large number of computers. Multi-user licenses are similar to site licences but they specify the exact numbers of users that can use the software at once. •Network Use oOrganisations can obtain network licences for use on multiple machines. Concurrent user licence allows the application to be installed on the server and accessed over the network, but at any one time only a certain number of employees can run the program.
Domain licences maybe be run on any computer part of a specific domain. •Various national perspectives to software piracy and copyright laws oEstimated use of 40% of all software use is illegally copied oPiracy cost of US$11Billion internationally in software industry oBusiness Software Association of Australia (BSAA) estimates that 32% of Aust software is illegally copied. Equates to A$290 million lost to developers per year. •The relationship between copyright laws and software license agreements oThe copyright act does not require a formal application in order to obtain copyright protection. A software licence agreement is a document used to create a binding contract between the purchaser and software developer. The software market Four Ps of marketing: •Product – what do you sell? •Place – where do you sell it? •Promotions – how do you spread the word? •Price – what do you sell it for? •Maintaining Market Position oSWOT analysis – to ensure the product remains viable. oDetermining Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Threats of your product. oTechniques include quality, reliability, support/maintenance, upgrades and growth strategies •The Effect on the Marketplace As developers bring out new products into the marketplace other developers would need to improve their products to retain market share this leads to developers continually innovate and develop better software. Side effects to increasing complexity in software is the need for an increase in computer power to run the application, i. e. computer games Significant social and ethical issues Social and ethical issues need to be considered by those in the business of creating and distributing software. •national and international legal action resulting from software development oMicrosoft computer vs Apple computer Apple released the Mac os with their PCs; this was the first system available with GUI. Microsoft soon released Windows which felt like Apple’s Mac os. Apple claimed Microsoft stole their idea, after long court battles a settlement was reached allowing both companies to continue distributing their operation systems. Public issues including: •The year 2000 problem oIn the 60s and 70s there was a requirement to use the minimum amount of storage space therefore developers stored the year in two digits. When a new millennium rolled over year 2000 was thought to be mistaken at 1900.
Millions of dollars was spent to ensure the computers avoided the Y2K problem, as it turned out very few problems occurred. A positive result of this was that many organisations updated their obsolete equipment. •Computer viruses oNew virus appears somewhere in the world on a daily basis. E. g. I love You virus, 2000, the email’s attached file contained a virus which attached itself to system files and changes the names. •Reliance on software oThe impact of computers and software has been significant in our everyday lives. Household appliances, all types of motorised transport, government authorities all rely and operate using software.
The software development industry has a huge responsibility to ensure all these systems are reliable and perform well. 9. 1. 2 Application of software development approaches Software development approaches A software development approach is a model of the general technique used to produce a software product. •The structured approach oConsists of 5 stages, which are completed step-by-step. ?Defining and understanding ?Planning and Design ?Implementation ?Testing and evaluation ?Maintenance oThis approach often takes long periods of time, this is due to the need to complete each stage before moving on.
