Mastodawn

You'll never see a motorcycle helmet or a rigging harness sold on the terms we sell software every day because that's obviously criminal negligence.

When people depend - and I don't mean "use", I mean "depend" - on your software then your software has crossed a line and your obligations to it are different.

I do not know where that line is, but at some point "this software is provided as is with no warranty express or implied" is not a morally defensible position.

https://pleroma.envs.net/objects/7162a70f-f92d-40a7-af11-bee2fe26d395

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Netzblockierer 2d ago

@mhoye Granted, find anyone but Wind River Systems' and their VxWorks that would actually offer any explicit warranties…

Red Hat (used to?) offer Insirance against software errors and subsequent damages as part of their biggest subscription tiers.
- Not shure if they still do…

If businesses and consumers weren't gullibe to accept that shit, Microsoft would've been sued into insolvency due to damages and downtime annually…

The Problem is that almost everyone seemed to have accepted that shite and is now rolling with it.
Also any liability would only be leveraged as a weapon against FLOSS, not as a means to hold CCSS vendors accountable!
- Similarly how [mostly Tech-Illiterate] Cyberfascists will always leverage their shite against Open Source and Communities, never against Corporations!

#WindRiver #VxWorks #RedHat #Microsoft #comsumers #businesses #FLOSS #CCSS #Accountability #Consequences #TechIlliterates #Cyberfascism #OpenSource

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F4GRX SÃ©bastien 2d ago

@mhoye if you are talking about free software, I dont agree unless maintainers are paid for maintenance.

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Haelwenn /элвэн/

2d ago

@f4grx @mhoye Yeah, after all a public license is just a default, and not the only one you can get.
So if warranties are involved, which can entirely be required by regulations (for example the EU Cyber Resiliency Act), get a proper contract.

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Konrad Hinsen 2d ago

@lanodan Does anyone offer maintenance contracts with concrete guaranties for complex FLOSS assemblies? E.g. for a large GNOME app including GNOME and all of its dependencies?

@khinsen @f4grx @mhoye Yeah, pretty sure that's RedHat bread and butter.

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Anton 2d ago

@lanodan @f4grx @mhoye

"Code is free, responsibility has a price"

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crzwdjk ✅ 2d ago

@mhoye Bicycle helmets come with s big disclaimer that they are not guaranteed to protect you from anything and they may have invisible damage that renders them ineffective and so on. What they do have is a certification test, in which a reference weight is put in the helmet and it is dropped from a reference height and peak acceleration is measured. If the value is below the limit, that model passes and can be sold.

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Clemens 2d ago

@mhoye The key word here is "sold". You're not paying for rsync, and neither is anybody else, but you do pay for your helmet or harness.

I don't like the sloppification either, but the path forward is to find a coalition of people for whom this is a problem, fork the project, and maintain it.

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VoidZeroOne

2d ago

@mhoye sure if I sold it to you but if I allow you to use copy and modify it for free that's not my problem 🤷🏿‍♀️

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Apfelphi 2d ago

@mhoye And that's why the EU introduced the Cyber Resilience Act. Not perfect, but a step into the right direction.

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María Arias de Reyna 2d ago

@mhoye

And this is why companies sell FOSS warrantying it (supply chain, support, technical assistance, customizations,...).

If a company sells FOSS "as is" and doesn't add any layer of anything over it, that's on the customer buying it when they could just download it. Not the software itself.

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