An attempt to backdoor the kernel

An attempt to backdoor the kernel

Posted Nov 7, 2003 8:34 UTC (Fri) by jamesh (subscriber, #1159)
In reply to: An attempt to backdoor the kernel by coriordan
Parent article: An attempt to backdoor the kernel

You seem to be confusing the issue yourself.

Would you be willing to sell/support a piece of software (proprietary or free software) and provide a warranty if you knew it had defects that might affect your clients? It sounds like a great way to get sued. You would want to minimise the risk as much as possible.

Larry is essentially saying that the chance of data loss with some other source code management systems is too high to make supporting them profitable. ie:

[amount of money lost in lawsuit] * [probability of lawsuit] > [profit from selling support/warranty]

Providing a warranty like this is a commercial activity -- you would be stupid to take on a liability like that without getting something in return. So it seems to be the right term to use here.

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