5 minutes after such a liability law was passed, I would decide never to post code publically to places like PerlMonks, and not to post code to places like CPAN.

Even if I was perfectly sure that I wrote code with no mistakes, there is no way I want to have to prove that in a court that is hard for me to get to because some idiot in South Dakota refused to understand that the bug is in their code, not mine. And, of course, I am not perfectly sure. Reasonably sure? Yes. But if you are writing software for monitoring hearts, and you use code I gave away for fun, then should be your responsibility to validate that the code is sufficient to your needs before you use it.

I think you will find that, no matter how you cut it, this is a thorny issue.

In reply to Re (tilly) 1: Programmers should be board-certified, just like doctors, lawyers, and CPAs by tilly
in thread "Buffer Overflow" rant in Risks Digest by dws

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