Thursday, November 2, 2017

HW21: Chapter 20

20.10) You work for a software company that has developed a system that provides information about consumers and that is used within a SoS by a number of other retail businesses. They pay you for services used. Discuss the ethics of changing the system interfaces without notice to coerce users into paying higher charges. Consider this question from the point of view of the company’s employees, customers, and shareholders.

I believe it is highly immoral to modify the system to coerce more money out of users, especially without notice. It is understandable to change a business model and raise prices. Markets change and software developers should change with the markets too. After all, they're in the industry to make money. If this is done, the users need to know far ahead of the changes. This needs to communicated clearly. Some users may feel using the system is worth paying more money. Others may not and will need time to migrate their data to another system. Making these changes without notice would reflect poorly on the developers and hurt their image in the long run.

No comments:

Post a Comment