Professional Responsibility

DavidParnas has written about ProfessionalResponsibility, which for him, includes SocialResponsibility?. A vocal opponent of the SDI (Star Wars) project, believes that ethical people should work on projects they think have unethical aspects. This way they might be able to have some influence on keeping things ethical and they have an obligation to inform themselves and the public of the risks and benefits of such projects. For his words and actions, he was given the first Norbert Wiener Award for Social and Professional Responsibility. See http://courses.cs.vt.edu/professionalism/Ethics/parnas.html, which references Parnas, David L. "Software Aspects of Strategic Defense Systems", Comm. ACM, Vol. 28, No. 12, Dec. 1985, pp. 1326-1335.

In the paper, The Professional Responsibilities of Engineers (http://www.cas.mcmaster.ca/~wmfarmer/SE-2A04-99/resp.slides.pdf), he talks about individual, social and professional responsibility, but mostly about the engineering aspects. He favors a SoftwareEngineering professional licensing system.

Much more material, not just from Parnas, is linked at http://courses.cs.vt.edu/professionalism/.