Do You Own a Volkswagen? Values as Non-Functional Requirements

摘要

Of late, there has been renewed interest in determining the role and relative importance of (moral) values in the design of software and its acceptance. Events such as the Snowden revelations and the more recent case of the Volkswagen "defeat device" software have further emphasised the importance of values and ethics in general. This paper posits a view that values accompanied by an appropriate framework derived from non-functional requirements can be used by designers and developers as means for discourse of ethical concerns of the design of software. The position is based on the Volkswagen "Dieselgate" case study and a qualitative analysis of developers views from Reddit discussion forums. The paper proposes an extension of an existing classification of requirements to include value concerns.