Should Developers Be Liable For Their Code?

Glyn Moody writes "They might be, if a new European Commission consumer protection proposal, which suggests 'licensing should guarantee consumers the same basic rights as when they purchase a good: the right to get a product that works with fair commercial conditions,' becomes law. The idea of making Microsoft pay for the billions of dollars of damage caused by flaws in its products is certainly attractive, but where would this idea leave free software coders?"

Comments

GPL

[neoform]

http://www.opensource.org/licenses/gpl-license.html

Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.

Re:gpl comes with a license

[jabithew]

Doesn't GPL have explicit anti-sue protection, with that whole section on lack of implied merchantability or warranty?

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
        it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
        the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
        (at your option) any later version.

        This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
        but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
        MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
        GNU General Public License for more details.

        You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
        along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

From the GNU how-to.

Does anyone know how this would interact with the potential EU law?