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Software liabilityFrom: Duncan Simpson <dps@io.stargate.co.uk> To: letters@lwn.net Subject: Software liability Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 17:58:31 +0100 Surely the simplest solution for liability is simpler: if you sell the software you are liable and if not then you can hide behind a disclaimer. Any attempts to sell software and hide behind a disclaimer would be legally null and void or simply illegal, with stiff penalties for contravention. The latter would probably face significant restistance---at present claims that something sold is not subject to a warranty are just legally null and void. AFAIK nobody has tried to sue a softwrae manufatcurer on this basis yet, possibly becuase of the vast sums that would be required to avoid losing by default when a well funded vendor spins the process out as much as possible. This is in line with my understanding of existing consumer protection laws. It should be possible to claim that you are not selling the software if I can buy one copy, install and use it on an infinte nummber of machines and lend my copy to anybody else and allow them to do the same. I am sure RH, SuSe, etc could live with that kind of redsitributability and suspect the GPL requires them to allow this anyway (modulo the non-free items merely aggegrated on the same media). I suspect all the commercial software vendors could not accept these conditions and therefore be forced to sell their software and thereby be liable for it's security, and hopefully merchantability and so forth too. If problems do come to light then vendors should be able to rectify this by releasing a patch for no charge and notifying their customers, after which their liability for that particular problem would cease. This might make security patches avialable sooner because assuming that only 1% of your customers are affected and therefore the bug does not maytter would become unsafe. If that 1% might be able to sue you for $100 million+ actual damages you might not be willing to take that risk. -- Duncan (-: "software industry, the: unique industry where selling substandard goods is legal and you can charge extra for fixing the problems." (Log in to post comments)
Software liability Posted Jun 11, 2002 14:38 UTC (Tue) by frew (guest, #482) [Link] the reason you can't just say this is this. Let's say a distro includes some software that the distributor didn't make. This is quite normal. So it turns out that when you run this program and your computers time wraps around (not that this would happen but this is just a scenario) it corrupts data on the hard drive. Now, since the distributor did not make the software how can they be blamed? I guess you could, but this would hinder a LOT of companies from being able to sell their distros. I dunno, thats just my 2 cents.
Software liability Posted Jun 11, 2002 23:35 UTC (Tue) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link] So you would eliminate a person's right to purchase software and assumethe risk of it having bugs? You understand this is the same as saying every software purchaser has to purchase insurance, don't you? The seller will obviously include the risk of bugs in his asking price. If that price is then too high for people to pay, he simply won't produce the software. I'd like to have the option of buying unwarranted software at a discount In your second paragraph, you actually state that your plan is already
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