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588 sats \ 5 replies \ @niftynei 28 Dec 2023 \ on: Open Source Liability is Coming tech
Im American so I might have a different understanding of the problem here, but my read on this is the liability is really only a problem for companies that accept payment for software services.
The article supports this: “If a commercial software product causes harm, whoever put the software on the market will soon be strictly liable.”
This is a warning for software corporations that use open source code. The business is going to be strictly liable for any code that’s used in their service, even the bits open source devs wrote.
There’s a long history of open source devs struggling to be paid for the usage of their work, maybe this is ironically the legislation that makes it suddenly important to be paying open source devs, mainly as a way to get them to hold liability for their work 🤣
tldr: this is a commercial software problem 🤷
Im American so I might have a different understanding of the problem here, but my read on this is the liability is really only a problem for companies that accept payment for software services.
Unfortunately not. The EU is considering making OSS devs liable even if they provide the software free of charge. The Debian project actually just held a vote on a statement of concern, as in the worse case, Debian would have to either shutdown, or maybe prohibit use of Debian by anyone in the EU. And of course, in an extreme enough situation, even that wouldn't remove the liability.
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That’s very different from what the posted link says which covers commercial software. Do you have a link to the source / law draft?
In the US, I think you’d find it very difficult to establish a responsibility for warranty/liability without a financial relationship or exchange.
Most contracts in the US aren’t valid without a monetary component (eg paying a dollar in exchange for rights).
Publishing code making you liable for the usage of that code is a very novel conceptualization of responsibility.
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That’s very different from what the posted link says which covers commercial software. Do you have a link to the source / law draft?
Read the article again. Towards the end it talks about how even unpaid OSS may still be held liable.
While the US often requires consideration to establish liability even in the US in many cases it doesn't, and other legal systems operate differently.
Publishing code making you liable for the usage of that code is a very novel conceptualization of responsibility.
For example, if you have a pool, even with a fence around it, you can still be held liable if a kid manages to get into the pool and drowns. It's not surprising to me that some politicians would try to stretch the meaning of liability to cover OSS too.
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