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You expect merchantability of products all the time. Otherwise, people could sell you all kinds of products with known, dangerous defects (e.g your car). Why sh

• gojomo 13y ago
  Why should free source code, published into the ether without any exchange of consideration, be held to the same standards as a product sold by a merchant?
• jsmeaton 13y ago
  Packaged software that is sold, to me, is different to code that you put up on GitHub for safe keeping. But I still think we've gone in the wrong direction. And to your example regarding cars, such a guarantee could be "this car is safe to drive on [roads]". Replace "roads" with the legal name for surfaces where cars can be driven. The underlying problem though is that there are such a large number of people that refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. "But, your honour, the guarantee said I could drive on roads. It didn't mention anything about being blind folded while doing so. It wasn't my fault I'm now paralysed". A pretty ridiculous example; and probably a naive one as well. But the law systems we live with are way too complicated. And I feel the people, whose job is to "interpret" the law (judges) are doing a terrible job upholding the spirit of law.
• anotherhue 13y ago
  If it's advertised as being suitable for important, dangerous things, and money changes hands, then sure I agree with you; but if a bug in glibc causes problems of an important and dangerous type, I don't see how any reasonable legal system could point the finger at the maintainers.