Examining Software Liability In the Open Source Community 241
snydeq writes "Guidelines from the American Law Institute that seek to hold vendors liable for 'knowingly' shipping buggy software could have dramatic impact on the open source community, as vague language around a 'free software' exemption could put open source developers at litigation risk. Meant to protect open source developers, the 'free software' exemption does not take into account the myriad ways in which vendors receive revenue from software products, according to a joint letter drafted by Microsoft and the Linux Foundation. As such, the guidelines — which, although not binding, are likely to prove influential on future lawsuits, according to attorneys on both sides of the issue — call into question the notion of liability in the open source community, where any number of coders may be responsible for any given defect."
I believe almost every free software I use has.... (Score:5, Informative)
"NO WARRANTY OR GUARANTEE IS IMPLIED. USE THIS SOFTWARE AT YOUR OWN RISK" or some combination of that. Even my home server says that every time I SSH into it.
So.....you're going to sue a developer for a defect, intentional or not, even though they said it was not warrantied and use at your own risk?
Re:Bug free software would be insanely expensive! (Score:5, Informative)
If you read the report from a better news source [yahoo.com] you'll learn that this only applies to fraudulent concealment of bugs, not simply their existence.
Re:God damn you, lawyers. (Score:5, Informative)
Another stupid babysitter law to protect idiots.
At a previous job I asked my boss why we used Oracle and he said that if anything ever went terribly wrong, the company would have someone to sue. Of course, suing someone doesn't restore customer confidence, data, or revenue. No verifiable technical reason, just that OUR lawyers got warm and fuzzy with contractual language that would never, ever get exercised and if it ever did try to sue anyone we'd have run out of money before they dipped into their free soda fund.
Anything that executes code is buggy. Applications, frameworks, libraries, protocol stacks, drivers, bios', FPGAs and microchips. Grow up and deal with it.
First of all, this is not "another stupid babysitter law". It is NOT a law at all.
Second of all, the guidelines are intended to prevent product vendors from selling products they know are defective. Just as it would be unacceptable if an auto company sold a car whose brakes wouldn't work whenever the car was going 72 miles per hour, it would be bad if a software company sold a system that it knew had a defect that could cause data corruption.