Students majoring in Computer Science at a particular college are required to take a two-semester Senior Projects course. Students who register for the course are placed on teams ranging in size from three to five students. Each team’s Senior Project involves creating a software system for some area business or industrial entity. The projects are solicited by the instructor and other faculty members and are selected such that the project gives the student real-world exposure to systems development and implementation. The relationship between the business and industrial entities and Senior Projects is very informal with no formal contracts or other legal documents existing.

The role of the instructor is to serve as laison between each of the business units and the teams and to grade the work generated by the teams. The instructor meets once a week with each team to assess the progress of the team and to provide instruction in project management, group dynamics, and other project skills.

One particular project involved a local apartment complex owned by two individuals. The owners wanted the team to create a tenant management system for their 95-unit apartment complex. Since they owned two other such complexes located in different cities, they wanted to use duplicate copies of the software system to also manage those complexes.

One owner had a extensive background in accounting and management and wanted the team to create a unique software package to fit her specific business needs. The team had weekly meetings with the owner in an effort to analyze and design the system and to keep the owner informed on the progress of the systems development.

During the final stages of coding, the wife of one of the team members observed the tenant management system her husband’s team had created. Since she worked as a secretary for a government agency that controls low-income housing in the area, she felt that the software her husband’s team was creating was exactly what her boss needed to help manage the low-income housing units assigned to her department. She proceeded to copy the executable file from her husband’s computer system and took the copy to work so her boss could view it. Upon questioning by the boss, she admitted she did not have permission to use the software. The boss, upon further questioning, realized that he and the instructor were personal friends. He then called the instructor and informed his friend what had happened and wanted to know if he could or should preview the software given him.

1. Given the above scenario, has a breach of ethics occurred?
2. What should be the response of the instructor to the boss’s question "Can I preview the software my secretary gave me?"

 

3. Who owns the tenant management system software?
4. Under what conditions can the team members give copies of the tenant management system to other individuals?
5. Can the instructor of the Senior Projects class keep a copy of the software? Can he show it to other individuals or to his class?
6. What are the rights of the tenants? Is the data in the tenant management system’s database open to public scrutiny?
7. Can the team use live data to test and debug the system? Live data is defined to be data about actual tenants in the apartment complex.
8. Is it ethical for team members to talk to other individuals about information concerning the tenants in the apartment complex? For example, can they tell their friends that Mary Doe, a resident of the complex, has a two-bedroom apartment and a dog?
9. Assume the wife’s boss was not a friend or acquaintance of the instructor. What is the instructor’s ethical responsibility, if any, to retrieve or otherwise repair any damage that may have been caused to the apartment complex owners.
10. After the Senior Project class is completed, can any member of the team who wrote the original tenant management system write a tenant management system for another company?
11. Would it be ethical for any member of the Senior Projects team who wrote the original tenant management system to contact the boss of the low-income housing unit and offer to write a tenant management system for him? Could he write a tenant management system for him using the same principles, features, and accounting techniques as the original?
12. Would it be ethical for any member of the original Senior Projects team to contact a competitor of the apartment complex owners and offer to write similar software for them?
13. Given the facts in the original case study, do the team members or the instructor of the class have an ethical responsibility to notify school authorities (i.e., a dean, provost, etc.) about the wife’s action (giving the software to a third party)?
14. What are a programmer’s responsibilities in keeping copies of software secure and what security precautions, if any, should a programmer take to insure that third-party copies do not exist?
15. Assume the student’s wife is not a computer science major and, therefore, not bound by any ethical standards associated with developing software for systems, did the wife violate any ethical standards? Did she do anything wrong?
16. What is the secretary's ethical responsibility to bring to her boss facts (and potential software) that may help that boss in managing the company--and thereby helping her company.
17. Given the facts in the case study, and you are the instructor, what do you do now?
18. Given the facts in the case study, and you are a team member, what do you do now?