Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem [LWN.net]

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 12, 2023 11:37 UTC (Tue) by bluca (subscriber, #118303)
In reply to: Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem by kleptog
Parent article: Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Indeed. The reason publishing free software can get away with not providing warranties is because publishing free software is not the same as making a product or a service available on the market.

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Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 12, 2023 13:38 UTC (Tue) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (3 responses)

> Indeed. The reason publishing free software can get away with not providing warranties is because publishing free software is not the same as making a product or a service available on the market.

That is, until the law gets changed to effectively make "publishing" the same as "making available on the market".

...Along with broadening the definition of "commercial activity" to include stuff entirely unrelated to the production of said software.

...Along with making the potential liabilities wildly disproportionate to the amount of commercial gain.

This unholy trio of changes makes F/OSS work either into purely a hobby (ie donations or occasional commercial work to cover your costs!) or something that only large organizations can afford to create.

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 12, 2023 13:52 UTC (Tue) by snajpa (subscriber, #73467) [Link]

In the Czech Republic, we've made the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms a part of our constitution, but with every fundamental right and freedom having a condition "if an appropriate law doesn't say otherwise". It's been over 30 years now and it still hasn't turned into a dictatorship, those Fundamental Rights and Freedoms do still hold. I don't think this line of argumentation is valid. We'd get nowhere, would have no progress, because every regulation change (esp. regulating previously unregulated stuff) can take a turn for the worse in the future.

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 12, 2023 14:01 UTC (Tue) by gspr (subscriber, #91542) [Link]

It sounds to me that at some point the lines between software and prose might blur. Surely fictional prose is well-established enough that nobody can conceive of holding an author liable for describing e.g. damaging/dangerous/illegal behavior. How contrived must code be to not be considered code? Can one imagine publishing code as prose or art, and requiring the user to transform said prose into code, to firmly shift any idea of liability away from the author of the software?

Going the opposite direction: At some level of formal language, mathematics becomes code. Most mathematics is not done in such formal languages, but can be translated into one (with lots of work). Are mathematicians liable for damage done by our proofs?

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 12, 2023 14:47 UTC (Tue) by bluca (subscriber, #118303) [Link]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope