Reading an article in the Linux Weekly News, left me thinking about the issues that form the subject of this post.

As adults, we are expected to take responsibility for our decisions and our actions. At the same time, we are social beings and depend on the work done by others to carry out our own tasks. Thus, we need to trust others if we are not to re-invent the wheel all the time. However, the decision of whom we choose to trust and to what extent is our own. We need to take responsibility for such decisions.

In reverse, when people repose their trust in us, what is our responsibility towards them? Primarily, we should be clear on what is being promised. For example, in the context of providing software, it is our responsibility to put a best effort to:

• Provide specifications about how the program is supposed to work.
• Make the program work as per documentation.
• Make it possible to achieve long-term maintainability and usability.

I don't see anything there about catering to some users' desire to dump their responsibility for their own machines on software developers.

If you want to be treated like a child, there are companies that will ``parent'' you. Be warned that you may have abandonment issues later unless you use the opportunity to grow up!