[long] Re: Legal traps in open source

[Alex Satrapa]

Simon Fowler wrote:
> Admittedly, that's easy to say right now - I might not be so happy
> about it five years down the track. But still, /I/ intend to do my
> best not to release software I wouldn't be willing to back with
> reliability claims. I might be rather nervous about it, but hey,
> paranoia is good ;-)

Would you make coffee with hot water?
Would you expect floors to be wet when you wash them?

Would you expect people to sue you if:
  - They span their car off your gravel road because they lost traction?
  - They electrocuted themselves by attempting to dry their hair in the 
bath?
  - They suffered a severe allergic reaction to the peanuts in your bag 
that is labelled "mixed nuts"?
  - After jumping over a 2m, barbed wire fence, they were run over by 
construction equipment?

Right now, that's the environment you'll be releasing your "sue me ware" 
into.  Once the courts can figure out how to throw out stupid claims, 
yes, I expect software developers to take full responsibility for the 
code they write.

But while the courts allow people to press charges of negligence because 
you make your coffee with hot water, I will simply do my best to make 
sure that my software works as *I* expect it to - and be thankful every 
day that the courts have upheld the "no warranty" clauses.

Imagine you wake up one morning after releasing the latest version of 
Config::IniFiles (a Perl package that lets you use INI style config 
files), and someone is suing you because it doesn't handle Java 
Properties style config files.

Or what about a geniune mistake, such as the fact that in a file like:

   [Section]
   value = parameter

... your software doesn't realise that there's supposed to be a space in 
front of the "p" as in " parameter"?

At present, thankfully, people are willing to say, "hey, please fix it!"

Perhaps a good half-way point would be to limit damages to two times the 
  money that the developer has ever made from the software?  This would 
encourage big fish like Microsoft and Sun to clean up their act, while 
not punishing the small fish like Sam Couter or Alan Cox* for being 
small fish.

Alex
*I in no way intend to suggest that Alan Cox is comparable to Sam Couter 
in terms of proficiency, knowledge or hairiness.