Woodruff: Weird architectures weren't supported to begin with

Posted Mar 6, 2021 23:25 UTC (Sat) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784)
In reply to: Woodruff: Weird architectures weren't supported to begin with by johannbg
Parent article: Woodruff: Weird architectures weren't supported to begin with

The natural strategy for dealing with liability issues around Exchange is to say "this is a commercial product offered for sale, so no, you cannot in fact waive the expectation that what you provide is of merchantable quality".

That liability model breaks down with free software because identifying an entity to which you can both reasonably(1) and usefully(2) attach civil liability will frequently lie somewhere between "difficult" and "impossible".

(1) "Reasonably" meaning that it is fair and equitable to hold the identified entity responsible in tort for the incident that has occurred.

(2) "Usefully" meaning the plaintiffs have a realistic prospect of recovering a useful percentage of their damages from the defendants identified, rather than just bankrupting the defendants to the sole benefit of the lawyers.

Woodruff: Weird architectures weren't supported to begin with

Posted Mar 7, 2021 14:11 UTC (Sun) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

And identifying the individual concerned will lie between "difficult" and "impossible".

Take sendmail (seeing as we're talking about MS Exchange Server) as a case in point.

Allman wrote it in the kinder, gentler days of the gentleman's internet. Lots of people modified it to do things Eric never thought of. Then came the crackers who abused it.

Is it Allman's fault - for not forseeing the future? Is it the fault of the people who re-purposed it to suit themselves? Is it the fault of the distros, or the software repositories, who made it freely available? Is it the fault of the people who didn't understand how to configure it securely?

Even identifying who those individuals are is fraught with problems.

Cheers,
Wol