This is the opportunity to write a wish list

Posted Jan 8, 2026 23:58 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: This is the opportunity to write a wish list by paulj
Parent article: European Commission issues call for evidence on open source

> can you not have a contract that says "this is supplied on R&D terms, and CRA obligations wrt any product on the market are yours"?

Of course you can! Everything is down to what the contract says! And if the contract says you work on an hourly R&D basis or whatever, and don't provide CRA guarantees, then the regulator will look at that and say to your customer "your supplier explicitly disclaims responsibility, it's down to you to sort it". If that means they have to throw money at you or get their own staff to do it, well if the contract says those are the terms then the regulator will enforce those terms!

Chances are your customer won't accept those terms, but that's down to them ...

Cheers,
Wol

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This is the opportunity to write a wish list

Posted Jan 9, 2026 0:14 UTC (Fri) by alx.manpages (subscriber, #145117) [Link]

> Chances are your customer won't accept those terms, but that's down to them ...

That's the problem. I hope the EU --the customer here-- realizes that free software is essentially beekeeping. You need to make sure the bees are happy, giving them flowers and forest; in return, the bees will give you honey and even pollinate your vegetables. You can't sign a contract with them trying to regulate the amount of honey they must produce, or negotiate how many flowers you are willing to provide them. Of course, if the bees don't produce honey after some time, you may consider finding other bees; but as long as the bees do their job, one should just keep them.

Of course, the EU needs to make sure which projects it should protect, to not waste taxpayer money.

This is the opportunity to write a wish list

Posted Jan 9, 2026 14:26 UTC (Fri) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

> Of course you can! Everything is down to what the contract says! And if the contract says you work on an hourly R&D basis or whatever, and don't provide CRA guarantees, then the regulator will look at that and say to your customer

Ok, then if that's the case, and the CRA obligations can be kept devolved to your commercial customer by contractual agreement, then... that's a pretty simple option for a developer/maintainer who wants to provide a procurement-process-friendly "it's a purchase, not a donation, see" best-effort support option that doesn't entangle said dev in CRA obligations.

Perfect.

(Course, handling CRA obligations for customers may be a good way to get more customers).