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Bunnie Huang, hardware hacker, wrote a brief article about transparency versus liability in the context of open hardware. He covers some of the tradeoffs without going into depth.
[...] Should a buggy library you develop be used in a home automation appliance that later causes a house to catch fire, you get to walk away scot-free, thanks to the expansive limited-liability clauses that are baked into every open source software licence.
Unfortunately, hardware makers don't get to enjoy that same luxury. Beyond guaranteeing a product free from workmanship or material defects, consumer protection law often requires an implied or express 'fitness for purpose' guarantee – that a piece of hardware is capable of doing what it's advertised to do. The latest controversy over Spectre/Meltdown indicates that more people than not feel CPU makers like Intel should be liable for these bugs, under the 'fitness for purpose' theory.
Open hardware makers should be deeply concerned. [...]
At BlackHat 2014, Dan was more specific regarding software and raised, with Poul-Henning Kamp, the idea that normal liability laws should also apply to software. But with that liability in place, exemptions should be available if vendors supply complete and buildable source code along with a license that allows disabling any functionality or code that the licensee decides against. Poul-Henning has called for a long time for changes to liability laws for software.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Sunday March 25 2018, @09:26AM (1 child)
And that's the thing: the existing Linux distros will be replaced with better tested ones and fit for specific purposes. Same for Windows and MacOS except there will be nobody to rejuvenate them because they are proprietary code, nobody will have it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @11:46AM
>And that's the thing: the existing Linux distros will be replaced with better tested ones and fit for specific purposes.
No stupid. The existing free stuff will be replaced by whatever the rich megacorps with throngs of lawyers deign to offer, and at whatever prices the now-monopolized market will bear. While as for all "liability", they have their forced arbitration clauses for that, and resources to drag you through courts till you bankrupt yourself.