4 ms·
i think this is not relevant. if the maintainer is making money from support contracts he should be liable for those just as i am selling custom non-free softwa
by em-bee 3y ago
i think this is not relevant. if the maintainer is making money from support contracts he should be liable for those just as i am selling custom non-free software to my customers as a freelancer. do you think i have more resources than this maintainer?
if anything we need a carve-out for freelancers or even small companies. i mean, how is this supposed to work? if sell support for a software i didn't write, should i be liable for the whole of it?
on the other hand i see a potential positive effect too: commercial support is going to be more expensive. but i am not sure if it is possible make that work without some kind of price limit below which, the developer should not be liable.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoThis isn't even a problem of carve outs, it's just a bad design. What you want here is something simple: Either the producer of the product provides security updates for as long as the product is in widespread use or they provide sufficient documentation and source code and such device access as is necessary for anyone to provide security updates. That works for everyone. If you're still actively supporting a product you're fine. You can stop supporting it whenever you want, but then you have to let anyone else do it. Producers of non-free software can stop supporting the product whenever they want by publishing the source code, or avoid publishing the source code for as long as they want by continuing to support the product. Open source developers will have satisfied the first option from the outset.