On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 08:23:22AM -0400, Michael Poole wrote: > Branden Robinson writes: > > If an innocent bystander is harmed through the operation of defective Free > > Software, how can he or she be held to the warranty disclaimer, given that > > he or she never received the corresponding copyright license? > > Can you elaborate on the situation you have in mind? I would think > that in general, the liable person would be either the one who put > Free Software in the medical device (construction machinery, etc) or > the one who operated the device (the immediate actor might be an agent > for a company that would be liable). Software by itself is pretty > limited in how it interacts with the world, so it needs some enabler > before its bugs could harm anyone.
"Shotgun suit" comes to mind immediately. Throw a summons at anyone vaguely related to the problem at hand, and hope some of them stick. If you thought your warranty disclaimer would protect you from any and all lawsuits, you're in for a nasty shock. More reasonably, in the absence of a binding disclaimer of warranty, the usual rules of due care and whatnot come into play. If the injured party can show that the software was dodgy, they *can* come after you directly, as you were a contributing party to their injury. No cites off the top of my head, but it's common to see several parties to a suit -- the operator personally, the company the operator was working for (if any), and the manufacturers of the equipment involved (again, if any) if it was possibly a partial cause of the injury. The injured party is in no way bound to your warranty clause, so you still have regulation due care to ensure that your software isn't full of nasssssty bugs. You *might* be able to palm it off onto the person who deployed your software, saying "they shouldn't have used it because it's unwarranted", but (i) that's a bad argument for free software (and software in general); (ii) your warranty clause could be struck as being contrary to the public interest, and (iii) you'd likely have to prove that the deployer's QA procedures were woefully inadequate. IANAL, NDIPOOTV. - Matt
