Case I
Abdulla works as a programmer for a large software company. He writes and tests utility programs such as compilers. His company operates two computing shifts: During the day program development and online applications are run; at night batch production jobs are completed. Abdulla has access to workload data and learns that the evening batch runs are complementary to daytime programming tasks; that are, adding programming work during the night shift would not adversely affect performance of the computer to other users.
Abdulla comes back after normal hours to develop a program to manage his own stock portfolio. His drain on the system is minimal, and he uses very few expendable supplies, such as printer paper.
a. Is Abdulla’s behavior ethical?
The Case II
Saeed and Mona are students at a university in a computer science program. Each writes a program for a class assignment. Saeed’s program happens to uncover a flaw in a compiler that ultimately causes the entire computing system to fail; all users lose the results of their current computation. Saeed’s program uses acceptable features of the language; the compiler is at fault. Saeed did not suspect his program would cause a system failure. He reports the program to the computing center and tries to find ways to achieve his intended result without exercising the system flaw.
The system continues to fail periodically, for a total of ten times (beyond the first failure). When the system fails, sometimes Saeed is running a program, but sometimes Saeed is not. The director contacts Saeed, who shows all of his program versions to the computing center staff. The staff concludes that Saeed may have been unintentionally responsible for some, but not all, of the system failures, but that his latest approach to solving the assigned problem is unlikely to lead to additional system failures.
On further analysis, the computing center director notes that Mona has had programs running each of the first eight (of ten) times the system failed. The director uses administrative privilege to inspect Mona’s files and finds a file that exploits the same vulnerability as did Saeed’s program. The director immediately suspends Mona’s account, denying Mona access to the computing system. Because of this, Mona is unable to complete her assignment on time, she receives a D in the course, and she drops out of school.
a. Has Saeed acted responsibly? By what evidence do you conclude so? Has Mona? How?
b. Has the computing center director acted responsibly? How?
c. What are some alternative actions Saeed or Mona or the director could have taken that would have been more responsible
The Case III
Saif is a programmer working for a large IT firm, Star Computers, which works on many government contracts; Salwa is Saif’s supervisor. Saif is assigned to program various kinds of simulations.
To improve his programming abilities, Saif writes some programming tools, such as a cross-reference facility and a program that automatically extracts documentation from source code. These are not assigned tasks for Saif; he writes them independently and uses them at work, but he does not tell anyone about them. Saif has written them in the evenings, at home, on his personal computer.
Saif decides to market these programming aids by himself. When Star’s management hears of this, Salwa is instructed to tell Saif that he has no right to market these products since, when he was employed; he signed a form stating that all inventions become the property of the company. Salwa does not agree with this position because she knows that Saif has done this work on his own. She reluctantly tells Saif that he cannot market these products. She also asks Saif for a copy of the products.
Salwa quits working for Star and takes a supervisory position with Purple Computers, a competitor of Star. She takes with her a copy of Saif’s products and distributes it to the people who work with her. These products are so successful that they substantially improve the effectiveness of her employees, and Salwa is praised by her management and receives a healthy bonus. Saif hears of this, and contacts Salwa, who contends that because the product was determined to belong to Star and because Star worked largely on government funding, the products were really in the public domain and therefore they belonged to no one in particular.
a. What could Saif have done differently before starting to develop his product? After developing the product? After Salwa explained that the product belonged to Star?
b. What could Salwa have done differently when she was told to tell Saif that his products belonged to Star? What could Salwa have done differently to avert this decision by her management? What could Salwa have done differently to prevent the clash with Saif after she went to work at Purple?
c. What could Purple have done differently upon learning that it had products from Star (or from Saif)?
d. What could Saif and Salwa have done differently after Saif spoke to Salwa at Purple?
e. What could Star have done differently to prevent Saif from feeling that he owned his products? What could Star have done differently to prevent Salwa from taking the products to Purple?