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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

The problem with licensing is that the people who want to do something bad are not going to be stopped by the fact that they don't have a license. If you're driving the getaway car in a bank robbery, does it matter if you don't have your driver's license?

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I think the more likely dangers in this case are not people with malicious intent, but people who do something without carefully thinking through the ramifications. Remember, the first internet worm was an accident. (Made by a contemporary of pg.)

And licenses probably won't help prevent well-meaning people's accidents, either.

What licensing can do is provide an incentive for general practitioners of a particular craft to follow a certain set of standards and guidelines for basic safety. If licensing is required for access to certain materials and maintaining your license requires either passing some sort of "don't be an idiot" safety course (or having your "lab" available for inspection) then this low bar can keep some of the idiots out of the way and can be used as a stick with which to beat upon well-meaning people who engage in gross incompetence regarding safety.

What licensing can do is block competition to the established powers. Do you think it was from the goodness of their hearts that Microsoft was pushing the attempt to license "software engineers" and programmers a decade ago.

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