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. "

Comments

agreed

[BushCheney08]

I agree. I should be able to sue CmdrTaco for getting me fired.

GPL

[Joehonkie]

I bet his wife gives away her books for free, too. On a more serious note, this is more expansion of the culture of victimization and the lack of responsibility that is taking over the Western world. Nothing is ever our fault, we muyst always find someone else to hold responsible for problems that we should be tough enough and capable enough to not get into or to solve ourselves.

Keyword

[mysqlrocks]

The keyword is that people agree to these license. If you don't agree, don't use the software. Or, you could buy more expensive software that comes such a guarantee. I can't think of any specific examples, but I'm sure the software that runs pacemakers has some sort of guarantee. However, it's very expensive.

All she has to remember is...

[MrByte420]

Little Johnny was a boy. He isn't anymore. For what he thought was H20 Was H2S04

you don't "license" use of a book

[Yonder Way]

The license is an agreement. If you don't like the terms, don't accept the license, and don't use the software.

There is a lot of crap out there about companies liking proprietary software because it gives them someone to sue when the software breaks catastrophically. That Microsoft has about a $40 billion dollar war chest, earned almost entirely through the sale of very broken software, pokes some big holes in that theory.

You're getting software for free. Don't bitch about indemnity in the license.

Re:you don't "license" use of a book

[cowscows]

Yeah, there are places that require much more stringent checks of their software. NASA doesn't just quickly throw together stuff and upload it onto the space shuttle, they test the hell out of it. And so they get high quality stuff written directly for their hardware. The downside to this is that development is slow, and it's expensive.

So basically, if you want software that's guaranteed, you're going to have to do a few things.
A) Pay someone a whole lot of money to write it.
B) Test the hell out of it before it gets put in place.
C) Realize that this is going to take a long time
D) Probably pick some very specific hardware for it to function with, and not have the option to easily upgrade in the future.
E) Make sure you get all the feature requests and whatnot right the first time, because patches and stuff are not going to be easy or cheap.

The market, for the most part, has opted for halfway broken software for a couple reasons. Upfront costs, freedom to grow/update/expand more easily, and because brokenass Windows was good enough for a lot of stuff. Hardware increases allowed significant boosts in productivity, and to a large degree, software was just sort of along for the ride. Now that commodity hardware offers so much power that the drive to upgrade is much less of a factor, it might make more sense to focus more on software quality.

Separate Coding and Liability

[Renegade Lisp]

To be held liable for every line of code that you write goes very much contrary to the free software / open source world, where developers often simply scratch their personal itch, or work out of a genuine interest in the matter. It is impossible for such individuals to get the financial backing (i.e. insurance) so that they can take this level of responsibility for their creations.

The solution, I think, is that the realms of coding and of liability need to be separated. Let the coders code and let service companies such as IBM work together with them to provide support and, if needed, liability for customers that need it. This is exactly what happens when IBM "sells" Linux to Wallstreet, for example. They sell the kind of responsibility for the software that individual developers could by no means provide.

"Ahh yes," counters the Industry,

[Shadow Wrought]

"But see, if we had to ensure that everything worked all the time, it would take too long and nothing would happen. There would be no software."
"Oh, I hadn't thought of that," says the commentator whose argument proceeds to disappear in a puff of reality.
Meanwhile, Industry, rather content with itself, goes on to prove that black is white and white is black and is sued into oblivion by the DMCA.

No guarantees

[winkydink]

In many cases, there is no option for a more expensive software that comes with a guarantee. Yes, some software like hospital life support and air traffic control come with a guarantee, but that is why you will see many 'normal' sw mfgs license mention these applications by name and say that you should not use their product in these environments.

Re:No guarantees

[Chyeld]

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.

EULAs do not provide any more protection

[LightStruk]

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.

That's exactly what you've done when you agree to a license from Microsoft.
From the Windows XP Home EULA, with caps removed to get past lameness filter:

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall Microsoft or its suppliers be liable for any special, incidental, punitive, indirect, or consequential damages whatsoever (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits or confidential or other information, for business interruption, for personal injury, for loss of privacy, for failure ot meet any duty including of good faith or of reasonable care, for negligence ...

and so on and so on.

With this amount of legal protection, I feel completely safe using Microsoft products!

Re:About time

[Skye16]

I disagree. You don't like buying/using my software because I'm free from any responsibility if it runs amok and kills your family and makes love to your motorcycle? Don't use it. I'm not going to make you. If you don't feel comfortable dealing with those circumstances on your own if they happen, then I don't want you to use my software products (not that I actually have any, but still).

If you don't like it - write up a new license claiming responsibility for whatever it is your software may do. Write whatever software you want. Users will possibly flock to you just for the peace of mind they would get (or is it piece of mind? ;D).

Of course, so will the lawyers, but hey, it was your choice (as a developer) to release software under those conditions anyway.

Re:Bad analogy

[kfg]

Well, then it's a damned good thing he didn't use that analogy, isn't it.

In fact, he didn't use an analogy at all, since author is to author isn't an analogy. He merely brought up the indemnification of the publisher to illustrate that in fields other than software authors can be held accountable for what they write and publishers do not wish to be the "deep pockets" target of the accountability.

And software has publishers too.

KFG

malpractice caps do NOT decrease premiums

[Travoltus]

Just so you know, malpractice premiums do not decrease for doctors in states where malpractice awards are capped to $250,000. Most lawsuits are launched when doctors maim or kill patients due to negligence, not because of highly publicized frivolous reasons. Your analogy is flawed, to say the least.

Now let's get back on topic. It's wrong for people to make excuses for bugs in code which expose my personal information to hackers, stalkers and marketers. I'd just as soon see the industry grind to a halt until they find a way to nip these miscreants in the bud. And no, I can't opt out of this dangerous system unless I stop driving (so much for being able to get food), close my bank account (yeah, hide my money under my bed so a thief has a reason to physically rob me and then kill my whole family to get rid of witnesses), declare myself dead (to retire my SSN - whoops, that's illegal, welcome to Club Fed! - or at least, welcome to joblessness) and practically move out of the country (well, actually that's a good idea if Canada is my destination).

Thanks to stupid programmers there's absolutely no way anyone can protect themselves from identity thieves. The only reason why someone hasn't hijacked you is that they don't care to.

Now please, come back after you find yourself having to fight for years to fix your credit after a hacker stole your personal information off Lexis-Nexis and then tell me they shouldn't stop the digital train for some major overhauls. Until you're a victim of the gaping flaws in the digital fortress you really don't understand the sharpness of that sword of Damocles that is swinging back and forth over your head.

Parially, yes

[brunes69]

If you as a company, invest tens of millions into a rollout of a new software product ( be it a new version of Windows, or a new Linux Kernel), without

• Fully researching the present and past state of the company or individuals responsible for the software, and their abilities both demonstrated and implied.
• Fully looking into [resent and past security issues with the software
• Doing a full independant side-by-side comparison with competitors

.. then Yes, you are responsible for a large part, if that software catastrophically fails. Because it is likely something you would have came across in all this research, in one form or another.

Take windows for example. If you lose $500,000 in a day because some critical windows server crashed from a certain DDOS attack, should Microsoft be responsible? Or should you be responsible, because you should have known from years of examples that Windows is very vulnerabile to those kinds of attacks, and you should either have an external protection mechanism in place, or not use the software? I think the latter. Then again, I am not the person who thinks "sue" when I slip on icy stairs in the winter and break my neck either. I think "maybe I should have bought better gooddamned shoes for walking around in the winter". The other commentors are right, there is not enough responsibility in the world today. Grow a backbone and stop sueing everyone.

Bullshit. There's always an option

[Sycraft-fu]

Pay more. Find a company willing to take a contract that includes gaurentees. However don't bitch when it's way more expensive and that it takes way longer. Don't expect something cheaply turned out on the latest hardware in a couple months. Expect that it's a verified system that takes years of testing, and is rigidly controlled.

There are companies that make solutions like this, IBM is one of them. You can get a mainframe setup to do database work that will never go down, ever. However it'll be expensive as hell, you will run the DB and ONLY the DB on it, it will be accessed only in rigidly controlled ways, etc.

Ya, more or less

[Sycraft-fu]

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.