Keynote: Understanding and Reducing Project Failure: The Ethics of

In this paper I correct the meaning of “Software Failure”, or more precisely, focus attention on some overlooked meaning of “Software Failure”. Software fails even though it was produced on schedule within budget and met the customer’s specified software requirements. Software has been developed which, although meeting stated requirements, has significant negative social and ethical impacts. By ethical impact I mean those impacts of software which positively or negatively the circumstances, experiences, behavior, livelihood, or daily routine of others. The ethical stakeholders in software are those who are so affected.