/Turing-Oath

The Promise to Develop Ethical Software

The Turing Oath

The Promise to Develop Ethical Software

Read the Oath here: https://github.com/maxmackie/Turing-Oath/blob/master/Oath.md

Purpose

In light of some recent unethical behaviour in software development, and after a user on Hacker News suggested that software developers have their own "version" of a Hippocratic Oath, I figured I'd try my hand at drafting an initial attempt.

The oath deals with user privacy and ethical handling of their personal information. This primarily caters to web applications which hold the personal information of users. It's named after Alan Turing because he was a remarkable person who advanced computer science by great leaps.

Please Contribute

The Oath should be an accurate representation of the development community and the moral code they uphold. I encourage people to get involved and contribute.

Simply fork the repository and add to a section (or add a whole new paragraph) or open an issue in the issue tracker and it can be discussed.

Note: I've received some feedback and some people think that Turing wasn't the best person to name this Oath after. Seeing as this is a socially-driven project, I'm more than open to changing the name to something that better represents the community.