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Open source liability is coming

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Re: Open source liability is coming

#31

Post by omnicognate »

kstrauser wrote: post #22

This is BS. I've talked employers into releasing all sorts of useful things under FOSS licenses over the years. The conversation has always been like "we have this handy thing, and it's not related to our core business at all, and there's no way it'd be a marketable product, but other people could probably use it, too." And the release process has always been like "here's a thing we made to solve a problem we had, an…

This adds no new liability for the employers you persuaded to release that code open source, only for others that choose to include it in their commercial products. Please attempt to understand things before calling them "bullshit".

Re: Open source liability is coming

#32

Post by withinboredom »

rwj wrote: post #28
withinboredom wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of exactly one rather popular one: left-pad. The author should have been liable for the damage they caused. The industry self-regulated itself but that is a case that I can think of, specifically caused by negligence.

Except that all the people using left-pad weren't paying for left-pad, and didn't have a contractual relationship with the author. IANAL, but I'm doubtful the courts would find there is enough of a relationship for the author to be liable.

That is what new laws are for.

Re: Open source liability is coming

#33

Post by 38 »

kstrauser wrote: post #22

This is BS. I've talked employers into releasing all sorts of useful things under FOSS licenses over the years. The conversation has always been like "we have this handy thing, and it's not related to our core business at all, and there's no way it'd be a marketable product, but other people could probably use it, too." And the release process has always been like "here's a thing we made to solve a problem we had, an…

You should probably read the article, as it doesn't say anything about what you are talking about

Re: Open source liability is coming

#34

Post by anonzzzies »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #7

Honestly just sounds like a misreading of the law to me. I don't believe it. One part says "If open source resources are in/called/touched your code, you’re responsible for their performance too. The open source resource licensed away their liability to you." This is the norm. The private company holds responsibility for vetting everything they ship. It's a speculation on how the law will be enforced for a law with n…

Also the EU laws are read here, by people who live in countries where that would be the case, with way too much weight. People from the US putting cookie accept banners and gdpr blah on their sites while they don't have to, because they are not violating in the first place (the intent of the gdpr is very simple; don't do things you don't want to have done to you to others; tracking, collecting info you don't need to run the business etc; if you do more, you have to be able to defend that and ask for permission), but in the US they can expect a cease and desist in 2 seconds while in the EU that's not going to happen. They are going after large abusers or abusers that won't listen after a ton of warnings. Which they should.

Re: Open source liability is coming

#35

Post by withinboredom »

omnicognate wrote: post #29
sevagh wrote: post #14

I find this article and the reactions here confusing. This seems to me like unequivocally a good thing for open-source devs. Making commercial vendors who rely on open source software liable for bugs is fantastic news, that's how it always should have been. You can't have a commercial company throw their hands up and say "well github.com/cutefuzzypuppy is at fault for writing an open-source npm package we used so har…

The article is misleading unless you read the whole thing and the reactions are standard knee-jerk ones from HN users that didn't need to read past "EU" to assume the worst possible misinterpretation.

I read the article, but it was quite ambiguous, at least to me. It isn't very well written / clear on what is actually going on.

Re: Open source liability is coming

#36

Post by pylua »

monooso wrote: post #25

There seems to be some confusion in the comments regarding what this means for people releasing open source software. The article makes it clear that (as the author understands it, at least) someone who uses open source software in their commercial product is liable; the people who wrote the open source code [1] are not. > If a user is harmed by software, the person they paid (targeted ads would count) must compensat…

The article says it is not clear who provides relief if the user directly uses open source with no middle man. That is the most concerning part for me.

Re: Open source liability is coming

#37

Post by sevagh »

omnicognate wrote: post #29
sevagh wrote: post #14

I find this article and the reactions here confusing. This seems to me like unequivocally a good thing for open-source devs. Making commercial vendors who rely on open source software liable for bugs is fantastic news, that's how it always should have been. You can't have a commercial company throw their hands up and say "well github.com/cutefuzzypuppy is at fault for writing an open-source npm package we used so har…

The article is misleading unless you read the whole thing and the reactions are standard knee-jerk ones from HN users that didn't need to read past "EU" to assume the worst possible misinterpretation.

Yes, the author of the article is all over the place

>But what if you’re just part of a collaborative open source project, give away your app, or if there’s open source code in the product you put on the market? Who gets blamed when open source might be the heart of the problem?

Every other sentence is dripping in "sympathy for open-source creators", but buried in the subtext is "sympathy for the innocent commercial vendors who decided to rely on open-source projects."

>So, how is open-source software implicated? If a commercial software product causes harm, whoever put the software on the market will soon be strictly liable.

Good!

>You will need to prove that your code wasn’t to blame to escape the costs. But what if you’ve embedded open-source code, used open-source tools, or called open-source APIs? Under the pending rules, you’d be liable for any errors in those sources as well, regardless of whether you directly contributed or not.

Better! Now a big evil company _can't_ pass the buck to the unpaid hobby project creator!

Re: Open source liability is coming

#39

Post by RamblingCTO »

The article leans a bit towards a pessimistic tone imho, so here's another source: https://www-heise-de.translate.goog/news/EU-Regulierung-Ausn...

Apparently the current state of affairs is that open source (non-commercial!) devs and projects are safe. If you pack OSS as part of a commercial offering, you're on the hook for that as well (read: you're liable for the whole product you sell and can't put off some aspects to open source). So nothing to fear for us so far. Still in process though.

Re: Open source liability is coming

#40

Post by CrLf »

treprinum wrote: post #30

EU is really bent on destroying itself by any means. First AI regulation, now open source destruction, killing off any avenues for growth for the next century. It's already uncompetitive at both.

It may be difficult to understand, but maybe the EU has other things where they want to be competitive instead? Maybe, I don't know, quality of life...?

Please stop measuring the EU using US standards.

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