A tiny provision in a recent piece of proposed legislation could have an enormous impact on software testers worldwide if passed. Part of a bill introduced in the House of Representatives would make certain missed bugs a federal offense – including security bugs, functional bugs and even typos – with potential fines up to $10k and even prison time if the bug was deemed as something that should have “reasonably” been discovered in testing.
Right now the bill is being debated on the House floor by the subcommittee on quality standards in software. I‘ll keep you posted on the results, as uTest has sent several employees and many of its top testers to Washington D.C. to protest the bill.
Let’s assume for a moment that the legislation is somehow passed – how will this change the way you test? For now we know few details, but we can safely assume that it means you’ll be spending more time testing than you ever imagined.
Of course, aside from individual testers, this proposed bill would also have a tremendously adverse effect on uTest, as our CEO Doron Reuveni explained via this public statement:
“Of all the bills we’ve protested this year, this one is probably the worst (in retrospect, the other ones don’t seem so bad now). Life for testers will never be the same if this bill is passed. Since it’s virtually impossible to find every bug, this bill will essentially turn testers into criminals, and it will turn uTest into the world’s largest community of criminal testers – it’s totally going to suck.”