So you can't hold firestone responsible for someone shooting a tire out, but what if the tire blows because the tire pressure was too low. Firestone may say that is not an "approved" operating condition and it's not their fault. Others may say that while the user (driver) does have some responsibility to ensure that the tires are maintained in proper working order, Firestone should have known that some people wouldn't, and the tire should have a more acceptable failure mode. Also, what if the car manufacturer and the tire manufacture can't agree on what the correct tire pressure should be?
I think there are a few questions that should be asked in product liability. "Did the manufacturer know that there was a problem?" "Did the manufacturer address the issue, if so how?" "Did the manufacturer make a reasonable attempt to inform their customers?" "Did the manufacturer CHOOSE to not correct the problem?" That's basically what happens most of the time. The manufacture had prior knowledge of the issue and refused to correct it for some reason. Anyone remember the Ford Pinto? Basically, you can't hold someone responsible for a problem they did not know about and could not have anticipated. I think most of this applies equally well to software. However, I think the rules should be different for something that is free to the end user (free as in beer) as opposed to something that the creator/manufacturer is paid for. If I download software from the internet and pay nothing to the creators, I have little room to complain. If however, I pay Microsoft (or Red Hat) to provide software to me, they then accept some responsibility for their product. So what happens if Firestone decides to give away a bunch of defective tires that fall apart at 50MPH ??? Just my thoughts, dave -----Original Message----- From: Michael Torrie [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 8:38 PM To: BYU Unix Users Group Subject: Re: [uug] Software Liability I tried to find a paper I wrote in CS 404 on this subject, but I can't find it, so I'll summarize. If you are going to hold someone accountable for software bugs, then you have to enforce it on free software too. You can't have classes of software. How do you assess monetary warranties? If you're doing it by the cost of the software alone, what about software that's given away for free from individuals or huge corporations? If it's according to the damage it caused, what if the creator of the software can't afford to pay? How do you determine whose fault it is? For example, suppose the end user used your software in a way that you never conceived of that scrambled his computer? What then? Basically, I think holding software makers accountable sounds good in theory, but hurts us all in practice, especially Linux and free software. I think consumer education and demanding higher quality software will do more to drive the industry than this kind of forced accountability. In life-critical applications (airplanes, medical equipment, etc), special contracts should be created between the software maker and the hospital or airplane manufacturers to ensure that lives are not lost due to bugs. But that's not in the scope of most consumer software that you're talking about. My paper was much more elegant than my post tonight; I'll send it to you if I can find it. Michael On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 23:32, Andrew Hunter wrote: > Hi. I have been reading up a little on the topic of software > liability. Specifically, it is reasonable to hold software > manufacturers liable for the defects and vulnerabilities in their > software? I would be interested to read opinions on this question. > It seems that some corollary questions are, Is it possible to write a > “perfect” piece of software of any real complexity—like an operating > system or an office suite? Is the manufacturer liable for attacks > made on their software? One comparison on that question was that of > the Firestone tire debacle—they were held liable for the defect in > their product. But the response to this was that it is not > analogous. Rather, to hold a manufacturer like, say, Microsoft liable > for the actions of the Blaster programmer would be inappropriate in > the same way as holding Firestone responsible for someone shooting out > a tire they made. > > > > Anyway, what think ye? > > > > Andrew > > > > ______________________________________________________________________ > ____________________ > BYU Unix Users Group > http://uug.byu.edu/ > ___________________________________________________________________ > List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list -- Michael Torrie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://uug.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
