Clearly, at the center of this building fiasco are those who are engineers and who are held (usually) liable for the work they oversee and/or seal. In my opinion, engineers should not be held SOLELY liable in these matters of public safety. The simple fact is that there are NO provisions in the laws that mandate and/or necessitate that engineering software have undergone a basic level of testing to ensure that it meets applicable building code requirements - as output states it does on truss specifications - even though, in my opinion, as a code tester and plaintiff in a lawsuit, the output may not meet all applicable building codes and as such, in my opinion, the output "misrepresents" the facts to end users such as engineers who depend on the fact that software packages have undergone testing to ensure the output does indeed comply with all applicable building codes.

Furthermore, it is also my very strong opinion that engineers are NOT code testers and, as such, to make them responsible for "output" and/or any software issues, is in my opinion, a very large lack of understanding of the facts as they pertain to "code testing" by legislators who write our laws in matters pertaining to these issues.

With the ever-increasing reliance on engineering software packages, this is an issue that engineers will be unable to avoid and an issue which truly needs to be determined in the courts as liabilities mount with each and every structure that is erected with major structural defects, with each building collapse, etc.

Problems in the industry were clearly identified years ago... and in my opinion, very little has been done to properly address them... and in matters of public safety... that is simply not acceptable.

When a person leases a car, that person does not expect that car to make them "dangerous"... and likewise, when a person leases software, that end user also does not expect that product to make them "dangerous" by allowingfor the design of structures with major structural defects. Engineers are NOT code testers... they are NOT compensated by software makers to test code and they would not, in my opinion, have the skills and/or time to do proper code testing! The fact that this problem has gone on for so long is in my opinion most indicative of that fact!

ENGINEERS...