Isn't the onus on the customer to define what sort of contract they enter into with a manufacturer (software included)?

Have you tried arranging a meeting with Microsoft to change the contract a copy of Windows is licensed under? Did you have to check with your car manufacturer to make sure the car doesn't blow up when it hits 20km/h?

Lumping every bit of code under "software" serves to obscure the different circumstances under which expectations are met

How else would it be done if they're all licensed under a 'software licensing agreement along the lines of "authors of this software are in no way liable for any harm resulting from the use thereof".' It seems the difference here (if software manufacturers were no longer protected) would be how much the manufacturer is liable for.

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

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.