Reliability

I would like to say that developers should be completely and totally responsible for making their software work correctly, all the time. This is not feasible in any way shape or form, regrettably.

I do believe that developers should make their programs as bug free as possible, to the point of fixing all bugs they are aware of. In the case of the linear accelerators, there was absolutely no excuse for the malfunctions in the equipment. I believe the blame should be placed squarely on the shoulders of those who made the machine. That case seemed more like the company was trying the hide the flaws in the machine though, seeing as how they were sued for a malfunction, and then proceeded to tell another hospital that a bug of that nature was impossible.

In th case of an operating system (lets say, Microsoft's Windows, just for laughs), a certain amount of bugs are to be expected, just because of the huge complexity of the software. There is no way to removed all of the problems in the software. The company should be willing to support the software they have made, though. And, they should put as much effort into fixing the bugs before release as possible.

But, as a final thought, what we, as consumers, accept as "finished software" is up to us. If we are willing to purchase Windows, no matter its flaws, then Microsoft isn't going to worry as much about the bugs in its code at the time of release. All they are concerned about is selling software, and if we buy it with bugs, all the better for them. If we required better software out of the box, Microsoft would be required in turn, to provide better software out of the box.