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

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 14, 2023 14:59 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem by Wol
Parent article: Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

> But by FORCING the customer to FIND the software themselves, you're making it clear to the customer that you are dodging liability.

I don't follow.

Is a PC maker selling an OS-less PC "dodging liability"? Or providing "consumer choice"?

After all, the PC maker will stand behind _their_ product; if there's a manufacturing or safety defect, they'll fix it right up. The OS (or any of the application) is a product of a different company, after all.

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Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 14, 2023 15:38 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> Is a PC maker selling an OS-less PC "dodging liability"? Or providing "consumer choice"?

And you're being obtuse.

An OS-less PC is still a PC. If that's how it's described, there's no problem.

A smart doorbell with no software to make it smart is (in all likelihood) not even a functional doorbell!

If you sell it for what it is, what's the problem? If it needs software to "function as described", but the software isn't supplied with it, then it's dodgy. If it's sold as "A PC" and it comes without software, well the customer might be surprised, but it is as described. If it comes as "A Windows PC", and the customer is told "well, you'll have to get and install Windows yourself", then it's NOT as described (which is a whole 'nother fraud entirely ...).

At the end of the day, the current situation is that stuff is being sold fraudulently, because it's not as described, and the customer has no recourse because everybody is passing the buck. What's worse is that everybody knows this is happening, and nothing is done about it.

The whole point of the CRA is to force manufacturers - be it smart TVs, mobile phones, cars, doorbells, whatever - to provide guarantees that their kit will work "as described" out of the box, and more to the point CONTINUE to work as described. And given that one of the requirements for mobile phones (and many other devices) is security, that's rather important.

THAT is why my phone has no security - and nothing worth securing! I simply don't trust it to keep my secrets safe ...

Cheers,
Wol

Let's slow this down

Posted Dec 14, 2023 15:40 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (1 responses)

We don't need to be throwing insults at each other, please stop.

In general, this topic is approaching 200 comments, and I suspect most readers have long since tuned it out. We're clearly not going to resolve this here; can we try to wind it down?

Let's slow this down

Posted Dec 14, 2023 17:08 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Sorry Jon. This seems to be trending very much towards trolling territory :-(

Time to walk away.

Cheers,
Wol