Stephen Davies wrote:
> I'm wondering how other LUG Members would tackle the release of software
> with known bugs and would it stop you from developing software in the
> future if you had the spectre of being sued for bugss in your software.
> Remember that the Microsoft EULA makes them NOT Liable for any defect in
> their Software although how that would ever standup to the scrutiny of a
> court I'm not sure. Perhaps this is why they are on the same side as the
> Linux Foundation.
I can understand the desire to improve software as some companies have
released some dire applications in the past and used the EULA to stop
them being sued. I worked for many years in large software development
teams, for a small number of customers who paid millions for the
software. We would document all bugs and the customers had access to our
bug database. This worked well and they knew what would be fixed and in
what release. For community written, open source software, who exactly
would you sue? Would it be Red Hat for selling support on software that
has a known bug? My guess is if you haven't paid for the software or
paid for support, then OSS should not fall in to this proposal. However
the likes of Apache, MySQL and openLDAP supported versions could have
problems. M$ have the most to loose here, as shown by them joining the
Linux Foundation. If the proposal actually makes law, I think it will be
a much watered down version and make it clear how to comply without
completing guaranteeing bug free software. It might not be a bad thing
in the end as it could stop companies releasing software, making us pay
for it and only getting it right in version 3 (I wonder which company
does that?)
John.
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