About the calculus for the project [LWN.net]

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 4, 2012 14:51 UTC (Sat) by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
In reply to: About the calculus for the project by marcH
Parent article: A tempest in a toybox

And by the way... http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2030258

"Some say the only two products not covered by product liability today are religion and software. For software that has to end;"

"If a builder builds a house for someone, and does not construct it properly, and the house which he built falls in and kills its owner, then the builder shall be put to death." (Hammurabi's Code, approx. 1700 BC)

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About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 5, 2012 12:35 UTC (Sun) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (3 responses)

I was already ready to say that if such a rule would come to govern free software, then all software I would ever release, regardless of its purpose, would be strictly anonymous and in public domain, because it would be very hard to accept any kind of personal liability for software given out for free.

Then I read the link and observed it advocates liability only for closed source software, where the author of the software must be trusted, and eliminates it for software with source code, where the user could (in theory) become fully informed consumer of the software product.

business

Posted Feb 6, 2012 9:03 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

Another quote from the same article:

"if you make MONEY selling something, you'd better do it properly, or you will be held responsible for the trouble it causes" (emphasis is mine).

It's really more about *business* rather than closed source. If you sell open source then you are accountable (or should be). If you give closed source software for free then you should not. In the latter case you typically do not even know who is using the software and for what.

business

Posted Feb 6, 2012 11:31 UTC (Mon) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link] (1 responses)

I think there's no point to make it hinge on money exchanging hands, especially as a liability rule such as this would lead to it being a standard practice to obfuscate this sort of liabilities.

business

Posted Feb 6, 2012 16:47 UTC (Mon) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

The reason money is a factor (AFAICT) is that in many cases your liability is limited to what you were paid for the product. Ergo, if you give something away for free, your liability is minimal, whereas if you sell it, your liability could potentially be greater than your net profits.