1 - This regulation only concerns commercial activity. So you could only sue the company I work for, and only if you've bought their products. Also by definition that excludes my personal projects.
2 - You can only sue for defects (in this legal context it means unsafe to use) or damage (physical or material). You can't sue for simple bugs.
These kinds of liabilities already exist for all the objects in your life and yet you don't spend your time suing people every time something does not work as expected I imagine
A law and regulation is written one way and interpreted a different way by the courts. In the USA it's all about case law.
Hypothetical:
I write a nifty alarm clock app. To cover some costs I charge a nominal fee. Some unknown condition occurs a user misses a flight and loses their job.
According to your position I should be sued.
Why should I be held liable?
Daniel Stenberg has a blog post somewhere about all the hate mail he gets over the fact that curl is bundled in some software. You don't think some litigious person won't attempt to go after him over it?
My family has personally impacted by a dumb lawyer trying to subpoena information incorrectly. Dealing with this was 7k in lawyer fees, covered by an insurance policy. Technically he could legally held for this terrible usage of the courts but it would have been an even bigger mess.
If that's true (I have no idea if it is or not) - I'd class it as a bug in the legalisation. Consider a router I've purchased. It has a bug that allows 1000's of them to be corralled into launching a DDOS against someone. The reality is I don't particular care that happened - it didn't effect me. But the person it did effect didn't buy it.
He's got many other examples of emails he gets from people. They find his name or whatever in some apps attribution.
It doesn't matter if there's legal grounds or not. Someone and some lawyer will make your life hell. They don't understand software nor do they care.
It will be horrifically stressful and potentially very expensive for someone.
Maybe it's better in the EU but the second the lawyers or the insurance companies get involved it will make everything awful.
TheBigRoomXXL|2 years ago
1 - This regulation only concerns commercial activity. So you could only sue the company I work for, and only if you've bought their products. Also by definition that excludes my personal projects.
2 - You can only sue for defects (in this legal context it means unsafe to use) or damage (physical or material). You can't sue for simple bugs.
These kinds of liabilities already exist for all the objects in your life and yet you don't spend your time suing people every time something does not work as expected I imagine
grumps|2 years ago
Hypothetical:
I write a nifty alarm clock app. To cover some costs I charge a nominal fee. Some unknown condition occurs a user misses a flight and loses their job.
According to your position I should be sued.
Why should I be held liable?
Daniel Stenberg has a blog post somewhere about all the hate mail he gets over the fact that curl is bundled in some software. You don't think some litigious person won't attempt to go after him over it?
My family has personally impacted by a dumb lawyer trying to subpoena information incorrectly. Dealing with this was 7k in lawyer fees, covered by an insurance policy. Technically he could legally held for this terrible usage of the courts but it would have been an even bigger mess.
rstuart4133|2 years ago
If that's true (I have no idea if it is or not) - I'd class it as a bug in the legalisation. Consider a router I've purchased. It has a bug that allows 1000's of them to be corralled into launching a DDOS against someone. The reality is I don't particular care that happened - it didn't effect me. But the person it did effect didn't buy it.
warkdarrior|2 years ago
grumps|2 years ago
He's got many other examples of emails he gets from people. They find his name or whatever in some apps attribution.
It doesn't matter if there's legal grounds or not. Someone and some lawyer will make your life hell. They don't understand software nor do they care. It will be horrifically stressful and potentially very expensive for someone.
Maybe it's better in the EU but the second the lawyers or the insurance companies get involved it will make everything awful.