Should Developers Be Liable For Their Code?

Glyn Moody writes "They might be, if a new European Commission consumer protection proposal, which suggests 'licensing should guarantee consumers the same basic rights as when they purchase a good: the right to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions,' becomes law. The idea of making Microsoft pay for the billions of dollars of damage caused by flaws in its products is certainly attractive, but where would this idea leave free software coders?"

GPL

[neoform]

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.html [opensource.org]

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

Re:GPL

[maharb]

If a law is passed 'protecting' the consumers then this clause of the contract become void. You can't have a contract to kill someone and have it upheld in court. Same goes with this sort of thing.

There are other complications but basically that clause doesn't help because it would become an illegal clause.

Re:gpl comes with a license

[jabithew]

Doesn't GPL have explicit anti-sue protection, with that whole section on lack of implied merchantability or warranty?

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
        it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
        the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
        (at your option) any later version.

        This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
        but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
        MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
        GNU General Public License for more details.

        You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
        along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/ [gnu.org].

From the GNU how-to [gnu.org].

Does anyone know how this would interact with the potential EU law?

Re:gpl comes with a license

[superwiz]

I am pretty sure that the only reason you can sue for pain and suffering is on the theory that your ability to peacefully enjoy your life was taken away from you. Not sure that someone can give you cancer, but if you get hit in the balls and don't suffer any consequences beyond a few minutes of pain, then you law suit options will be very, very limited. You will be able to charge them with a crime though.

As to the moronic comment about the car thief, learn the difference between civil and criminal law and then come back, OK?

I am fully aware of the difference. Please, take your medication now.

Re:Marketing

[supernova_hq]

That's why if blame must be cast, it must be cast on the company as a whole. If you buy a television and it burns down the house, you don't sue the chinese kid making 3 cents and hour, you use the company (Sony, Toshiba, etc).

As for free software (beer), almost all free software comes with a notcie along the lines of "This software is provided free of charge without even the guarantee of sale...". If you provide someone with something, but do not charge for it, there is no guarantee of sale, so there is no liability.

Re:Licensing and Accredidation

[xilun]

You are confusing lot of things and so completely missing the point. Qualification of safety critical software already exists and already is done by qualified people, and this is probably the case all over the world. And the EU is already doing fine for qualification of safety critical software, thank you very much. Few casual consumer products with low safety risks need licensed engineers to be created. There are other mechanisms to protect the consumer in case of defects. Finally, about responsibility, regardless of the domain, the people who are responsible are not very often the only people doing all the work.

Re:Not my fault

[SlashWombat]

Actually, 99 times out of 100, its the software. As a hardware developer, it really pisses me off when I have to look through the crappy code to find the bloody obvious fault that 20 software "gurus" couldn't bloody well see! Of course, the software developers don't do the same for me. Software writers are overpaid, and underworked. If they got off their arses, and did some of their own testing, things might be a bit different.