I don't disagree. I see both sides I don't think that the typical software EULA is fair, either. As a consumer of software products, I cringe and even feel outraged when I spend money on something and basically agree that if it totally wipes out my system they (the vendor) shall remain blameless.
However, iron clad proof that something did or did not cause monetary damage due to a particular piece of software can be problematic. A computer is not that closely comparable to something like a car. You buy a car and rarely do you do something significant to it afterwards that would cause a problem of liability that could be easily be mistaken against the original seller of the car. With a computer you have tons of other third party software, drivers, etc that interact with each other. So proving that defects from a single vendor caused damage is not always easy. And it often can be easily misidentified. The following hypothetical scenario is very common: Say you work at AOL as tech support. You get a call from someone screaming that your software destroyed their computer. But the problem really was the video driver by vendor X they upgraded two hours earlier and they had only gotten around to rebooting until after they installed your software. And this mistake can happen to the best of technical people. If a car has some kind of defect where the integrated dealer supplied cruise control caused you to drive through your house and put you in the hospital for 6 months, you can't possibly blame it on the air filter you replaced in it after you bought it. You also can't sue the auto company if the your vehicle has that defect but nothing bad happened to you. You can demand a fix within a reasonable period. You could sue if you got hurt and you could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was because of the cruise control. Cars often have recalls. I had to take my van in for some minor work and found out that there were about 5 outstanding recalls on it. Did the original post suggest that I should have been able to sue the pants off Chrysler even if nothing bad happened to me from those defects? Or did I misunderstand? I would agree that you should have legal recourse if you meet some reasonable conditions. One being that you can prove that you incurred some real monetary damage. And another that you can prove within a reasonable doubt that the products of the company you're suing is solely responsible for that damage and was not enabled by any other vendor's software. And also that you can reasonably argue/convince that the responsible company was negligent in that they did not issue fixes (in the car world this is called a recall) within a reasonable time that they knew of the problem. Although I think if you were damaged by defective products before the problem was known, you should be able to claim damages as well. Unfortunately the way the EULAs are written it does not appear that we have these rights. And I would agree that we should have *reasonable* rights. Not rights where we can sue just because something has defects. So I don't think I disagree so much but am rather taking a more practical approach. There are things you can do to influence the market. You can refuse to buy the software. And then you will have to use something that is "free" like Open Source. This might be good, might be bad depending on your resources and needs. You also can try to sue their pants off. This is likely to cause a) create a new industry for lawyers b) create a new industry for insurance companies (software malpractice insurance) c) motivate the software vendors to write better software d) drive software prices way up to cover the extra costs of a, b, and c I personally feel going to open source is a better way to go if you feel you must make a statement, however that will not necessarily motivate the commercial vendors to write higher quality software. They may be just as likely to think that they need to put in more bells and whistles. If you research the effort required to put out really high quality software you will find that probably the highest quality software that is produced in the world is by the Space Shuttle program. They still have a few known defects. But they don't have thousands of hackers hammering on their software every day 24hrs/day, either. The price is quite exorbitant. And while this program budget's efficiency may not be as lean and mean as some commercial outfits in very competitive markets, they are very cost conscience nowadays. These guys aren't just playing around making cute software and chunking it out on the shelves for people to buy. Obviously lives are at stake so quality is tip top priority and the cost is high. You don't get quality without higher cost. I don't think too many people would be agreeable to paying $1000 for a single copy of Windows. ~Kevin Davis³ What possibly could go wrong? ----- Original Message ----- From: "James Lee Gromoll" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2003 4:00 PM Subject: RE: Microsot Liability for vulnerabilities > I guess my $.02 won't solve the world's problems, but..... oh well. > > Software is a consumer product. Period. Subject to consumer protection laws > at least in the US. You may think it is not a fair comparison. I don't > personally think the licensing agreements are fair and I think the legality > will eventually be brought into question. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
