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And, relatedly.... if I offer to perform allegedly-medically-beneficial surgery for free, am I exempt from all the laws about regulation of medical practice? A
by jholman 13y ago
And, relatedly.... if I offer to perform allegedly-medically-beneficial surgery for free, am I exempt from all the laws about regulation of medical practice?
And relatedly, if I give away viruses for free, am I good to go?
Not that I'm particularly sanguine about the odds of legislators getting it right, but I agree with rayiner that "open-source" isn't a GOOJF card.
On the other hand, it seems clear that code I write only for my own use has different regulatory requirements. In general, laws often let people do riskier things for themselves, relative to risks they let people take on behalf of others. But in this case, if you write code for yourself, it's obvious that you opted in to its features.
- alistair77 13y agohmm, construction and medical practice require legislation because dodgy practices may well result in harm to individuals. I don't see that's relevant here. BTW, I support the move by Mozilla.
- rayiner 13y ago> Not that I'm particularly sanguine about the odds of legislators getting it right, but I agree with rayiner that "open-source" isn't a GOOJF card. Right. I think a law that said that open source browsers had to do this or that would be stupid. But that's a strawman anyway. The regulation would probably involve what advertisers could do, or regulate browsers sold with PCs or tablets, or whatever. Not that I'm in favor of regulating it at all... but the fact that it's open source has nothing to do with it.