zlacker

As far as I can tell whether you are libel has nothing to do with the licence, or whether the software is open source. Instead you must have gained revenue from someone (somehow, directly or indirectly) by providing the buggy software to them, and it must have harmed them. It's the same as getting a car with a defect. If you didn't buy it from them (eg, it was a gift) then the giver isn't libel. Even if you did pay for it, if it's not too serious they may get away with it. But if you paid for a new car, and you died because of a defect in it, then the manufacturer has a problem.

So if someone downloaded the software from some public repository without consulting you (let alone paying you), it doesn't apply to you. I imagine that would be true if they downloaded a binary and there was no source available (so it's not open source), and it had some horrible proprietary licence that nonetheless let you use it for free.

But on the other hand, if you made them pay for some GPL'ed software and them made the source available on request as the GPL insists you must, then it does effect you despite it being open source. So really, open source and open source licences have nothing to with it.

In fact from what I can tell, part of the reason this law exists it to forbid shrink wrap licences on paid software exempting the supplier from liability. The licence having no effect on the applicability of the law is a desired feature. If the consumer paid for it, it applies no matter what your licence says.

Why this wasn't always the case is what's odd here, not this attempt to fix it.