Taking On Software Liability - Again

An anonymous reader writes "You may remember an article in which a BBC correspondent wrote an article criticising current software licenses. In answer to the huge discussion that this brought about, he has written another article defending his views. From the article: 'It is possible to make error-free code, or at least to get a lot closer to it than we do at the moment, but it takes time and effort. Doing it will probably mean that commercially-available code is more expensive and cause major problems for free and open source software developers. But I still believe that the current situation is unsustainable, and that we should be working harder to improve the quality of the code out there.'"

Comments

There's more to it than just the code

[Namronorman]

This guy sounds like he's just full of hot air because of a bad Norton AV installation. If one program causes something "devastating" to happen, who is to decide that it's not the user's fault, the compiler's fault, the programmer's fault, the OS creator's fault (and if it's OSS, who's package etc?), or the hardware's fault?

The computer world if full of many variables and I don't see this happening anytime soon, though with recent laws you never know.

He's got a valid point

[MerlynDavis]

The author has a point here. We accept a lot more ... "bugginess" in software than we do in any other product (Cars, Banks, Tools, etc.) And it's pretty much become the norm that if there are problems, folks just shrug, claim it's just software and move on. But if the folks building bank vaults left as many holes in their products as software, people would be screaming bloody murder. I've done software development as a hobby myself, and don't release my code to the public, because I know it's not even up to my own standards of stability, reliability, security. Programmers/developers need to take more time with their products, and think security & reliability from the start of a project, not as an afterthought. With as many products requiring patches within the first couple weeks of release, consumers do need to start getting angry about this stuff. Or, at the very least, start challenging software companies when the products they do release require more MB in patches than the software was originally....

Re:Bullshit

[narrowhouse]

Large software companies are now getting to a point where they would LOVE this. Current software companies has had 35+ years to build market share with EULAs that say that their products are not guaranteed usable for any particular purpose. The opportunity to change the rules now gives a huge advantage to current market leaders by creating an enormous, artificial, barrier to entry into the market. This would be the best way to kill the growth and competition in the software market. Look at all the other businesses that are encumbered with huge legal liability requirements and you will find business sectors that contain huge, multinational, 50-100 year old companies.

If a company wants to shop around and find a guarantee, fine. Requiring legal liabilty of all software vendors will just create another mess of goverment regulatory groups, certification boards and happy insurance salesmen.