Software Liability
from the what-would-it-mean dept
I’ve been hearing more and more people talk recently about whether or not software makers should be held liable for defects and bugs in their code. Thanks to the current license agreements, most software companies basically force any user to sign (or, rather, click) away their liability rights to any product. However, lately there’s been a bigger groundswell to change the laws to make it easier to get back at companies that produce awful software. Another article talks about what the impact of such a legal change would be on Microsoft who would probably be the main target of every lawyer looking to get their hands on the many billions of Microsoft cash. However, I still wonder if the bigger impact wouldn’t be on small software shops, one-person shareware programs, and open source projects – who would suddenly have to deal with the liability costs themselves.