The drumbeat for software warranties goes on

Today's Wall Street Journal has an article on companies wishing to hold software companies liable for flaws, security and otherwise. One notable quote:

"I'm paying the bill. Other companies are paying the bill," says Ed Amoroso, AT&T's chief information-security officer. "The software companies are not paying the bill." Mr. Amoroso says AT&T spends roughly $1 million a month just to patch its existing software. Testing and installing a single patch across AT&T's network can require as many as 30 people working full time for several days.

Mr. Amoroso calls "absurd" provisions of Microsoft's license agreements that hold Microsoft harmless for damages caused by software defects, even when Microsoft knew about the flaws.

These are customers speaking, not pundits. Sounds like something Microsoft could apply its $50 billion warchest to. But rest assured, this marketing embarrassment -- namely the failure of software companies to provide any warrantee to their products whatsoever -- is going to become a bigger problem until the software industry does something about it. And as the article points out, if they don't, there is the chance that the government will.