Re:Book Review: "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends"
by quasirandom on Sunday February 28, 2021 @08:41AM
(#26293342)
> Since nobody knows how to reliably ship secure commercial software, liability will mostly have the effect of making it difficult to start new software businesses.
I think you would agree that having critical string parsing logic written in C and shipped in an opaque binary is both negligent and more dangerous than a reasonable person would expect. Traditional products liability claims focus on those kinds of questions: was there negligent conduct? is the product more dangerous than a reasonable person would expect?
Attaching some kind of liability is a good way to encourage the industry to settle on standards of non-negligent conduct. If you provide vendors an opt-out mechanism (e.g. disclose your source and there's no liability), it will not dramatically interfere with the cadence of development.
Common law is very well suited to establishing standards in a dynamic environment. It got us through the first industrial revolution.
I think you would agree that having critical string parsing logic written in C and shipped in an opaque binary is both negligent and more dangerous than a reasonable person would expect. Traditional products liability claims focus on those kinds of questions: was there negligent conduct? is the product more dangerous than a reasonable person would expect?
Attaching some kind of liability is a good way to encourage the industry to settle on standards of non-negligent conduct. If you provide vendors an opt-out mechanism (e.g. disclose your source and there's no liability), it will not dramatically interfere with the cadence of development.
Common law is very well suited to establishing standards in a dynamic environment. It got us through the first industrial revolution.