Resumen
This article focuses on the work that was originally carried out under the Joint IEEE-CS and ACM Steering Committee for the establishment of software engineering as a profession. In 1998, when Software Engineering Coordinating Committee (SWECC) was being established, the ACM and IEEE-CS received a request from the Texas Professional Engineers Licensing Board for help in defining performance criteria for software engineering licensing exams to be administered in Texas. As a result of this request, the question of licensing software engineers became more of an issue both for SWECC and for ACM. ACM Council believes that the current efforts of the Software Engineering Coordinating Committee (SWECC) toward licensing is misguided as they assume that software engineering is a profession appropriate for licensing under the rubric of the Professional Engineers Licensing structure and requirements. According to ACM, the only way to be a licensed software engineer is to become a professional engineer, software engineering license would be interpreted as an authoritative statement that the licensed engineer is capable of producing software systems of consistent reliability, dependability, and usability.