The state of the memory-management community in 2024

Ok, this led me down a bit of a rabbit hole. From what I can tell, this is judge-created law (Hedley Byrne & Co Ltd v Heller & Partners Ltd [1964]) which established that, in that case, a contractual relationship or a monetary exchange was not required.

Here we do have a similar concept of responsibility during pre-contractual negotiations and the concept of duty of care, but they're legislative concepts and our civil law system doesn't allow courts to extend these concepts in such a vague way. But given that a UK court did say a contractual relationship is not required, there haven't been any cases that to clarify a blog isn't covered and the legislature hasn't seen fit to clarify the situation, I can understand that people are disinclined to set themselves up to be a test case.

So I guess the answer is to write to your MP? I'm sure they'll get right on it. /s

(It does feel like this whole argument also applies to something like OpenStreetMaps. I don't think anyone has tried suing OSM contributors for creating incorrect maps, but if you're not feeling secure about publishing CVSS scores, I don't suppose modifying OSM or Wikipedia feels any safer.)