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

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 14, 2023 15:29 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem by pizza
Parent article: Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

That is a separate issue; the CRA says you can take away functionality in an update and lose liability that way, but does not protect you from being sued for taking away functionality.

And, in any case, you wouldn't be on the hook for all of the software in Fedora - only the bits you preinstalled. You could install a minimal Fedora 52, and that's what you're on the hook for.

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Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 14, 2023 16:03 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> And, in any case, you wouldn't be on the hook for all of the software in Fedora - only the bits you preinstalled. You could install a minimal Fedora 52, and that's what you're on the hook for.

In that case, why bother with installing Minimal Anything? Just ship FreeDOS as part of the system firmware and let the buyer assume all responsibility.

Bottomley: Solving the Looming Developer Liability Problem

Posted Dec 14, 2023 16:08 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

That works for a PC or laptop (albeit that you can't, under other consumer laws, claim the system has functionality that doesn't work under FreeDOS - so you can say that the device has an Intel AX201 WiFi chipset, but not that it has WiFi 6 support), but not for the vast market of IoT devices where the S in IoT stands for their commitment to security, where people don't care about the software, they care about the function.