Examining Software Liability In the Open Source Community

snydeq writes "Guidelines from the American Law Institute that seek to hold vendors liable for 'knowingly' shipping buggy software could have dramatic impact on the open source community, as vague language around a 'free software' exemption could put open source developers at litigation risk. Meant to protect open source developers, the 'free software' exemption does not take into account the myriad ways in which vendors receive revenue from software products, according to a joint letter drafted by Microsoft and the Linux Foundation. As such, the guidelines — which, although not binding, are likely to prove influential on future lawsuits, according to attorneys on both sides of the issue — call into question the notion of liability in the open source community, where any number of coders may be responsible for any given defect."

Comments

Microsoft

[gillbates]

Second point, who is going to sue some no-name contributor who doesn't have any money anyway, especially if you have to prove that that particular developer knew there were bugs?

Microsoft. That's who.

If it is possible to sue OSS for bugs, any vendor who feels they've lost business to OSS will be prone to suing OSS maintainers, if for no other reason than to cast FUD on free software, i.e. "Didn't they (the OSS developers) get sued for writing buggy software?"

Without the proposed legislation, such lawsuits are much more likely to be dismissed.