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Negligence and Open Source

Posted by Cliff on from the stuff-to-think-about dept.

icing asks: "With the story about the Melissa trial, some people argue that Microsoft is partly to blame. Negligence in making a product safe to use, cannot be excused. And again, software is compared to real world things like cars and how car makers could not get away with what Microsoft is doing. Does not the same argument apply to makers and distributors of open software? Could makers or distributors of Open Source be held liable? Under which conditions? Or do we have a double standard here?" Hmmm...a touchy issue. What are your impressions?

2 of 361 comments (clear)

  1. It's Much Less Of A Problem With Open Source by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5
    Disclosed source-code software has much less of a problem with negligence since the user and distributor are able to perform due diligience on their own - if the user has something to lose they can check the code or read other people's reviews of the code and protect themselves from damage. If there is damage due to negligence, the fault is at least in part the user's because they had the power to protect themselves.

    This is not the case with Microsoft's non-disclosed-source-code software - they don't give the customer the power to check or fix their negligence, thus the negligence is all theirs.

    True Open Source in general declines warranties because the software is distributed gratis or at very low cost. Of course, you have the option to make a contract with a support provider who might provide you warranties against negligence. I don't think it's likely that a provider of gratis software, Open Source or not, would be found liable for damages he explicitly disclaims. I'd like to hear of any cases where this has happened.

    Thanks

    Bruce

    --
    Bruce Perens.
  2. Let history repeat itself... by evil9000 · · Score: 5

    Let history repeat itself. It took car manufactures well over 20 years to start incorporating saftey features into their vechicles, but until that happened, the only people complaining about how unsafe cars were were the people who cleaned up after the accidents (ie Doctors, nurses, etc).

    This all changed with the Nadar report - and the publicity it generated in the media and the public eye.

    What needs to be done is to increase people's awareness of how bodgy the Micro$ server code is, and how only the micro$ exchange servers were the ones that were affected adversly by the Melissa virus...