

The time has come for software liability laws - sciurus
http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2030258

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wccrawford
Holy crap. Those laws would drive software prices sky-high. The developers
have 2 choices:

1) Spend a lot more time developing and testing.

2) Spend a lot of money on insurance.

I'm guessing they'll do the second, and these laws will serve no purpose other
than to make people rich for figuratively "spilling hot coffee on themselves".

My other thought was that the consumer would have to -prove- the software
caused the damage. In the majority of cases, there is simply too much software
on a single computer to prove that something was the cause. Only class action
lawsuits would stick in anything but the most extreme cases.

While I do think that software developers should take more care in developing
their products, I don't think a law is going to help. The market already
penalizes those who write crappy software... Other people hear about it and
simply don't buy it. For instance, there are several game developing companies
that I won't buy from. Not because their games are bad, but because they have
all be so buggy that I can't stand the thought of playing their games. Their
quality is consistently bad.

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markbernard
The current laws already can be used for covering software. That is why you
see EULAs everywhere that begin with WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE
THAT THIS SOFTWARE MAY CAUSE.

