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BBC Commentator Goes After Software Licensing
An anonymous reader writes "Bill Thompson, a regular commentator on the BBC World Service programme Go Digital, criticizes current software licenses (including the GPL) for giving developers 'freedom from responsibility which would be considered wholly unacceptable in almost any other sphere of activity, public or private'." From the article: "A friend of mine is a children's writer. When she writes a non-fiction book she is typically asked to sign a contract that indemnifies the publisher against legal costs resulting from errors of fact in the book. If she was to suggest a school experiment that involved drinking sulphuric acid, because she'd confused it with acetic, then she'd be in big trouble. Yet I can't do anything when a company produces software that exposes my online banking details to any script kiddie with time to spare, because I've agreed a license that removes such liability. "
Actually in all cases there is that option. Just because no one is willing to pay $150,000 to a software development firm to create a knockoff version of Quicken and guarantee a certain level of reliablity doesn't mean it's not an option.
What this guy is complaining about is the fact that he expects consumer level software to come with the same quality of proffessional level software. It's a bit idealistic and unreasonable.
If you aren't willing to pony up the money for quality, you shouldn't complain about the quality of the what you get.
Stepping beyond that kind of bad analogy, there is another one:
"If Apple turned round to nano users and pointed to a shrinkwrap "licence" on the high-design packaging that exempted it from the provisions of consumer protection law it would never get away with such a blatant disregard for its customers' rights."
But, if I go to a pawn shop and buy refurbished goods, which are sold "as is" then I have accepted more responsibility at the expense of supplier/creator liability.
Likewise, with free software, you accept liability for it being free. If it harms your system, then you should have examined it yourself to be sure. If you don't think that's fair, and that users shouldn't have to (possibly because they can't), I'd like to point out that I can sign a difficult to read contract without prior knowledge of law (which is especially important in "common law" countries, where the law is not always as explicit as it should be).
The moral of the story, hire someone to proof-read the code you want to use, just like people hire lawyers to check contracts. I know that I would like to see an increase of demand for programmers.
Am I open minded towards open source, or closed minded towards closed source?
You choose to accept the risk, in trade for the benefits. Designing a system with no bugs is expensive and time consuming. You have to test things extensively at every level. That also means testing all the possible interactions. Not only how the OS interacts with the hardware, but how it interacts with the software, and how it interacts with each other. So when you design a system like that, the hardware neede to be known, as does all the software. You can't have it run on random comoddity hardware using random software beacuse then unforseen problems can result.
So by choosing to run software cheaply and quickly developed in random environments, you choose to accept teh fact bugs may occur.
To me, demanding that commoddity software on commoddity hardware run without bugs is like demanding that an automobile on the public streets never get in to an accident, even one caused by driver error, unforsseen conditions, or other drivers. Can't happen. If you want gaurentteed operation, you need controlled conditions.
I think the bad analogy in this article is between the products. In the case of a book, it is a complete product. When a book is released, it is unlikely to be used for other than the intended purposes, and when used with another product it is not expected to still stand on its own (you cant subst the 265th page for another authors page, and expect it to work, but that is expected of the dll's, windows 98 vs XP, etc.)
Most software is either released inside a complete product, and the product liabilty is left intact. Or it is software inteded to be used with other software, and with the original programmers usually not being the system integraters, going back to a single person to be responsible is no longer easy or practical.