Software reliability growth models, which are based on nonhomogeneous Poisson processes, are widely adopted tools when describing the stochastic failure behavior and measuring the reliability growth in software systems. Faults in the systems, which eventually cause the failures, are usually connected with each other in complicated ways. Considering a group of networked faults, we raise a new model to examine the reliability of software systems and assess the model's performance from real-world data sets. Our numerical studies show that the new model, capturing networking effects among faults, well fits the failure data. We also formally study the optimal software release policy using the multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), considering both the reliability attribute and the cost attribute. We find that, if the networking effects among different layers of faults were ignored by the software testing team, the best time to release the software package to the market would be much later while the utility reaches its maximum. Sensitivity analysis is further delivered. KEYWORDS multi-attribute utility theory, networking effects, nonhomogeneous poisson processes, software release policy, software reliability growth model 1952