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SCO and Software Liability: What To Consider
mristau writes "I wrote my senior thesis on the problems of software liability in the context of both proprietary and open source software development. I used the SCO v. IBM issues as a basis for further hypothetical analysis. The work provides sufficient technical background for a general audience. I'm not a legal scholar so my analysis isn't perfect, but the issues are relevant to us all."
Software liability increasingly affects software developers and computer users. Programmers today typically subscribe to one of two main paradigms of software development: proprietary development or open source development. Each model presents unique problems of legal liability. Proprietary development puts software firms and individual programmers at potentially enormous risk if their work harms others. Open source development muddies the waters of authorship and legal responsibility extensively while putting the end user at a diverse set of risks. The accidental, yet inevitable mixing of development paradigms exacerbates the difficulties of assigning legal liability and introduces ethical dilemmas on many levels. I argue that a legal and technical paradigm shift must occur in order for technology to maximally benefit society in the coming years.
Right off the bat I disagree. How does Open Source muddy the waters of authorship more than proprietary? A visible CVS checkin system is, if anything, less likely to be used for checking in infringing code than a closed shop system. And no, I did not read the whole 94-page paper.