Well, the difference as I see it is that there isn't any open source cars being made, nor any closed-source freeware cars or even shared source cars. That I know of.

So, the liability should perhaps be placed on those that actually make money on promising something will work. If I give you my car for free, you don't have much to come with if you complain that it breaks down on you on the way to an important meeting - probably not even if I promise it will hold forever. If you pay me for it however...

That way, of course, it would also be allowed to put someone to the wall for not doing a good job installing or maintaining even free products. Lots of open source business is done by doing the work for the customer, while the product is free. I guess it is fair to hold the work done accountable to some degree, if, and only if certain promises were made.

Then, we can always dicsuss if liability for software is really something we want at all - those that got hit hard my Microsoft viruses, and know people that didn't due to running apache or any non-Outlook mail program probably thinks so. I think those people are very upset that they paid lots of money for something that cost them even more money.

In conclusion, I guess I can support that if something costs money, it should have some kind of enforcable warranty - blatant, and/or expensive errors should be possible to get retribution for. However, free "no-warranty" products should not be covered by this. Maybe. It's too tough an issue for this little brain. :)

Still, good luck to anyone trying to convince the legislators there is a difference... *sigh*

You have moved into a dark place.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

In reply to Re: OT: Software & Liability by Dog and Pony
in thread OT: Software & Liability by cjf

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