WTF Is Ethical Software Development?

The US state of Arizona added a new rule for early release from prison, but the computer system that calculates release dates could not incorporate it and was not updated. So hundreds of people have just been... left in prison, after their release dates. Bad software ruins lives, even without AI.

Cloud Native software development has some peculiarities that make it particularly interesting from an ethical standpoint—and particularly ripe for an exploration in this collection of WTF Is Cloud Native?

Firstly, approaches such as Continuous Delivery, a cornerstone of a Cloud Native approach, give engineers the ability to deploy code to end users directly, often without oversight, an ability that can easily be abused.

Secondly, software often works at a huge, even planet-wide scale. This scale and reach allows developers to do real good, but also tremendous harm, particularly when combined with the preceding point.  

Thirdly, that global scale is a fairly new development. The speed at which the tech industry has exploded—and its tools have infiltrated our daily lives—is breathtaking. We are all still struggling to get our brains around it. As the industry analyst Benedict Evans has written, “When Netscape kicked off the consumer internet in 1994, there were only 100m or so PCs on earth, and most of them were in offices. Today 4bn people have a smartphone—three quarters of all the adults on earth. In most developed countries, 90% of the adult population is online."

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