The argument appeals to pride, fear and prejudice.

Unfortunately, licensing will not protect us from those pesky programmers in India.

(1) Shooting our profession in the head won’t make us more competitive.

(2) Every indication is that there are plenty of smart people in India who can learn the content and culture of SWEBOK as well as Americans. Look at the geographical distribution of CMM level 5 organizations.

(3) The saddest part of this argument is that SWEBOK largely endorses a document-heavy style of software engineering that is of greatest value when the work is split among arm’s length organizations. The documents drive the communication and standards of the project. This style facilitates outsourcing rather than protecting local talent from it.

There are tremendous advantages to keeping a skilled workforce local. If the project is being designed, managed and sold in the United States, there are tremendous advantages to doing the work in the United States.

The cost of developing software is usually much less than the value of the software installed or, especially, the massive losses that can be caused by bad software.

American software engineers will be more competitive on American projects than distant workers if they are more flexible, more responsive, more able to get done what the customer needs done — tracking the customer’s changing needs rather than resisting them. Heavyweight processes like those primarily discussed in SWEBOK do not facilitate this.

If we (Americans) don’t offer substantially better service, or substantially greater skill, to local clients, there is no reason for our clients to employ us over skilled, cheaper, remote labor.

Licensing won’t save us from uncompetitiveness, but it might help make us much less competitive.