Would Vendor Liability for Bugs Kill OSS?

Glyn Moody writes "Bruce Schneier has written an interesting column for Wired suggesting that vendors should be made liable for bugs in their software. But where would this leave open source developers? Would what seems like a great idea actually be the death of free software?"

Comments

Would Vendor Liability for Bugs Kill Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bruce Schneier has written an interesting column for Wired suggesting that vendors should be made liable for bugs in their software. But where would this leave Microsoft? Would what seems like a great idea actually be the death of proprietary software?"

What terrible reasoning

[linvir]

Employee theft in shops, ATM fraud, tax fraud... all rolled into one unsymmetrical ball and used to argue in favor of software liability. What?

Have you ever bought an apple? Did you notice that you could just take it and eat it pretty much as soon as you wanted? Apples are really cool, though they are a little vulnerable to flies. The vendors' solution is to sell apples more cheaply.

Oranges are no different. For years I have argued in favor of ready-to-eat oranges. Orange vendors are in the best position to do this. But unfortunately, they don't have much interest. Features and profitability are more important. Ready-to-eat oranges will change all that. They'll align flavour with convenience and synergise exciting new solutions.

One last story.... bananas thought they had a great idea: having a thick peel that was also easy to remove. But then monkeys found out and we all know how that ended.

That was a great idea, but it didn't work very well. Customers, especially monkeys, don't like to be stopped by peel.

Flavour must be aligned with convenience, but you have to be careful how you synergise solutions.

Easy Solution...

[aardwolf64]

Just make the fine equal to some percentage of the retail price for the product multiplied by the total number of users...

Re:What a content free story...

[Intron]

Perhaps what we need is author liability for magazine articles.

Re:No, if...

[Gentlewhisper]

And then MS will sell you the service of packaging, burning and shipping Windows to you for the low low price of $200...

Oh don't worry, I will help myself.

Re:What goes around, comes around

[Zero__Kelvin]

For example, if he had told me to use MD5 ten years ago, could I sue him now that MD5 has been discovered to be "insecure"?

Absolutely! Of course Bruce has always acknowledged that there is no such thing as proven secure algorithms ... the only question is, should we hold you liable for your own idiocy?

Should self-proclaimed security experts, like Bruce Schneider ...

Self proclaimed ??? There is only one question left to ask ... should people who aren't smart enough to "self-proclaim" themselves as wastes of Carbon be allowed to post to Slashdot?