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

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 14, 2023 15:15 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem by Wol
Parent article: Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

> And lastly, supply of software is a SERVICE that customers are willing to PAY FOR. If you're not prepared to let an EU-based supplier supply (AND WARRANTY) your software, some other manufacturer will, and you'll very rapidly find yourself frozen out of the EU. Nobody will want to buy your product, because they will just not trust it.

Would it kill you to just do some fact-checking? You may find hundreds of offers of devices with FreeDOS and this number doesn't go down, as economy craters it only goes up. Because they are cheaper.

If you really believe these sellers are expecting that you would stay with FreeDOS in these devices I have nice bridge to sell you.

> By FORCING them to download from OUTSIDE the EU, you're making it clear that you are dodging liability.

You may call it by any name you want but this is what's happening and what would continue to happen.

It would be interesting to see how quickly trend would become like in some other countries outside of EU where the majority of devices are sold in that fashion, but as users would be squeezed more and more it would happen with certain inevitability.

Your crazy idea to force all these sellers to indemnify Debian via CRA just wouldn't work, sorry.

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Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 14, 2023 15:45 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (2 responses)

Right, but people are choosing those systems because they're cheaper, not because they're better.

And the bigger deal that's triggered action now is all the Internet-connected devices that aren't PCs; can you find me hundreds of offers of cars with ERA-GLONASS (or similar IP-connected system) hardware, but no software pre-installed on any of the many devices that interconnect to the ERA-GLONASS (or eCall, or other mobile IP gateway)? Or home WiFi routers sold without any software or firmware? Or washing machines, dishwashers, fridge-freezers and other "smart home" devices sold without software.

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 14, 2023 16:06 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> Right, but people are choosing those systems because they're cheaper, not because they're better.

No -- They're choosing those systems because cheaper *is* better.

(As the saying goes: "fast, good, cheap; pick two" -- the choice made is by definition the "better" choice here, because "better" is relative to the person making the choice)

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 14, 2023 16:09 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

The majority of people I know are choosing more expensive systems with a pre-installed OS; the only people I know who are choosing FreeDOS systems already have an OS they want to install separately. Mostly, people are willing to pay a bit more money to avoid spending a lot of time getting frustrated by an OS installer (installing any OS is not trivial for non-technical people).