4 ms·
I understand your sentiment. I expect this will not solve the underlying issues and will indeed create more issues in the long run: with that rule, interpreted
by Aeolos 6y ago
I understand your sentiment. I expect this will not solve the underlying issues and will indeed create more issues in the long run: with that rule, interpreted strictly, only established multi-billion/trillion dollar companies will be able to assume the liability and risk of insuring software against “negative impact”. The bar “careful or you may go to jail / be financially ruined” would be too high for most SME or open-source developers to clear.
Take medical software as an example: a highly regulated space, that very few SMEs and approximately ZERO open-source projects can afford to enter.
And even in that space, strict liabilities are restricted to the software’s *intended use*. As long as the manufacturer has taken steps to clearly indicate what is appropriate use / misuse of the software, the manufacturer is NOT liable if the software is misused by the user. At that point, the liability shifts to the user of the software instead.
An in-between approach would be GDPR-style regulations that define what is and is not appropriate to do, with proportional penalties for failing to do that: intended vs unintended failure; penalties proportional to company income so it can hurt small and big companies alike without outright killing them on the first few strikes. However there is a cost even to that: such regulations do block valid innovation and they tend to expand and get more complex year over year.
There is no easy way out here that I can see...