I go from shop to shop to shop and I have seen in many of the manufacturing and engineering oriented shops that the management is well aware of how shoddy everything is on the IT side. The people who are used to the disciplines of engineering professions know that software - and hardware for that matter - should be regulated in the same ways, but also realise that until it is it's open season. Imagine having the ability to produce barely functioning product and have only caviat emptor to answer to? It's free money. No one is going to walk away from it yet.

The few instances where certian standards are required (like Oracle requires a trained Oracle Parallel Server professional to be attached to your site if you expect gold support for OPS), the professionals are just as bad as the managers. These people know they have companies over a barrel. There is a shortage of people who ahve the cert.'s and a need to have them there no matter what the cost. Again, free money.

The only resolve will be time and failure. As more and more people of the Gen X move up the socio-economic tree and more politicians become aware of technology issues as platform - which will come with the further penetration of technology into daily life of non-tech professionals - there will be demands for quality above quantity - and above new versions. Only then will we have a way to start regulating in some constructive way.

I think a VERY good question is what would such regulation do to the Open Source movement? Who's going to stake their certification on patches they didn't write? Interesting...

"A man's maturity -- consists in having found again the seriousness on
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had as a child, at play."                                   --Nietzsch
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