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[return to "Open source liability is coming"]
1. sevagh+F6[view] [source] 2023-12-29 18:40:30
>>daniel+(OP)
I find this article and the reactions here confusing. This seems to me like unequivocally a good thing for open-source devs.

Making commercial vendors who rely on open source software liable for bugs is fantastic news, that's how it always should have been. You can't have a commercial company throw their hands up and say "well github.com/cutefuzzypuppy is at fault for writing an open-source npm package we used so harm to our customers is not our fault!"

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2. omnico+98[view] [source] 2023-12-29 18:46:10
>>sevagh+F6
The article is misleading unless you read the whole thing and the reactions are standard knee-jerk ones from HN users that didn't need to read past "EU" to assume the worst possible misinterpretation.
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3. within+p9[view] [source] 2023-12-29 18:51:36
>>omnico+98
I read the article, but it was quite ambiguous, at least to me. It isn't very well written / clear on what is actually going on.
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4. omnico+5a[view] [source] 2023-12-29 18:55:04
>>within+p9
I agree it's very ambiguous, but if you read the whole thing it's clear that when dev A releases code under an open source license and it's included in a commercial product by company B that then harms person C, the liability will be on company B. Most of the hot-under-the-collar responses here are assuming it will fall on dev A, which is a misinterpretation the article's author did not do much to discourage.
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5. Mauran+nc[view] [source] 2023-12-29 19:06:45
>>omnico+5a
That completely ignores the second half of the article. I agree that it's confusing why the article goes into so much depth on "companies are now liable, similar to how everyone expects" in the first half when the main talking point is/should be "open source devs are now liable if consumers use their software directly" (as discussed in the second half).
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