BackgroundIn many jurisdictions, the use of the title ``Engineer'' is controlled, and in those jurisdictions, only those licensed by the jurisdiction's engineering licensing organization can called themselves engineers.
In many jurisdictions, there is no such engineering as software engineering. In a few jurisdictions, including Ontario, the engineering licensing organization has added software engineering as a kind of engineering and licenses people to be software engineers.
To be licensed as a software engineer, one must generally graduate from an accredited software engineering degree program, pass a series of exams proving knowledge, or both. Among the bodies of knowledge that an engineer must posses is that of the ethics of his or her engineering.
Traditionally, the development of a safety-critical system funded by government or industry is required to be at least managed by a licensed engineer of the appropriate disciplines, who accepts legal liability along with the developing company for the safety and reliability for the system being developed.
Team AConcerned citizens who have seen software-caused industrial disasters, including at nuclear power plants, that have endangered lives or have even killed, are demanding that all software developers be licensed software engineers as a way of ensuring the correctness, reliability, and safety of all software intensive systems. They see licensing of software engineers as a way of ensuring the professional competence of software developers, just as licensing of physicians is a way of ensuring the professional competence of medical practitioners. Moreover, would you want to fly an aircraft whose avionics software was developed by someone other than a licensed software engineer who has legal responsibility for the software?
Team BConcerned programmers who develop software that is not in any way life- or safety-threatening see the call for all software developers to be licensed software engineers as a way of restricting their freedom to work in the job that they have been for years with no such restrictions. They see the call for all software developers to be licensed software engineers as a way of foisting on them liability for defects that occur naturally in any software. Finally, licensing cannot guarantee competence.