Why Can't Microsoft be Sued Under the Lemon Law? 210
briant97 asks: "Microsoft is sitting back making all this money by charging for desktop and server operating systems. If you go for a server, they also add additional charges through client access licenses. Well, now that they've charged you all this money they leave their software open to viruses and exploits beyond belief, which will cost your company even more money. When will it stop? When will Microsoft become liable for their actions? I mean they are making billions while costing other companies billions. Ford, Chevy, and all other car manufactures get held liable if they make a defective product, why not Microsoft?" One can argue that you sign away your right to seek damages from Microsoft, by agreeing to the EULA, however there is still this issue as to the strength of a EULA since they've never been tested in court. How do you feel about this subject? Should software owners be allowed to "sign" away their basic rights via click-thru licensing, or should software manufacturers be liable for the critical defects that show up in their software?
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Liability For Software Bad (Score:2, Informative)
Re:All software makers should be held liable (Score:3, Informative)
The fuses melt, the rods drop and the reactor is disabled.
Nuclear power plant desingers justifiably have a belt and braces approach to things. This also applies to the software. They are not going to be running Windows. I suspect they'll not run Linux either. Neither are anywhere near reliable enough.
Re:Isn't this important to open source as well? (Score:2, Informative)
The prevailing wisdom is that the GPL only grants rights. It doesn't take them away. Hence if it was ruled invalid, anyone who distributed GPL software would be guilty of copyright infringement.
For much the same reason, it is quite unlikely that all clauses in an EULA would be invalidated. The part that permits you to install it on a machine would have to remain valid.
Re:Isn't this important to open source as well? (Score:3, Informative)
My opinion is that if software writers were liable for damages it would be the end of the software industry, including open source. Microsoft may last the longest but even it would be destroyed by litigation. All software would have to be written by people who keep their identities secret. I guess it would be open source, but you would lose the ability to be publicly known as the author of it, and there would be no clear way to communicate fixes back to the author.
Re:slippery slope (Score:5, Informative)
Even Microsoft will not be liable for their software defects. They make it perfectly clear in their own license (their exeption is refunds and replacement of the software).
Kinda debunks that concept about paying Microsoft licenses for the sake of having a liable software provider, doesn't it?
Consumer products vs. software (Score:3, Informative)
When you are developing a consumer product, whether electronic or not, there are usually a very limited number of modes of interaction between the user and the device, and generally a very well-defined, firmly specified set of data it operates on. Testing and making sure it works properly is relatively easy - you don't worry about whether somebody has a Voodoo 8 Extreme graphics card or Kingston 1-bit-weird RAM or the strange USB dongle that overrides the standard Windows drivers with their own DRM-enabled gunk. Product lifecycles are much longer, it may take anywhere from 8 to 36 months to get a product to market depending on its nature, and it is expected to have a shelf life of several years to earn back all the R&D costs and make a profit.
Anyway, if my device that plugs into a wall socket and has an on/off switch blows up and burns somebody's house down, it's pretty clear who's at fault - either the people that designed it, or the people that manufactured/assembled it. If my software fails, there's often no way to say whose "fault" it really is - was it the hardware assembler? The video card manufacturer with their flawed drivers? The OS developer with their crappy architecture? The spyware bundler that stuck destabilizing software on the system? Or the application developer who wrote an app that worked fine on all the systems they did QA on, but mysteriously failed in some unanticipated configuration?
Even ignoring these problems, we still have the issue of short product lifecycles, lots of feature-based competition, version warfare, and so on. They all occur in most product businesses, but at nowhere near the rate and intensity as in the software industry. And when it comes down to it, the people who buy software for personal use and often for businesses too, consistently prove they value ooh-ahh features and version numbers at least as much as, if not more than stability and security.
Ironically, this lemon law stuff usually comes from frustrated software developers, not consumers. The developers hate the fact that their companies' marketing or sales people force them to release products too early, in unfinished or untested forms and then they get blamed for the fallout. Usually this is the result of poor project management and the inability to accurately assess tradeoffs between featurization, release schedules, and financing prior to setting out on the project and prior to beginning development. Know what you're building before you build it, or make sure you have lots of time and money.
Re:As is.... (Score:3, Informative)
The only sale is a bit of physical media. You can do with the CD itself what you like. If you want to play frisbee with it or use it as a coaster, MS isn't stopping you.
But the software, they just sold you a license to use it. Nothing more, nothing less. You go to Hertz and pay the rental price, you aren't being sold the car, are you? You're being sold a license to use it under certain conditions (one condition being that you give it back after the hire period).
I don't say it's good, I don't say it's right, I don't even say that all the license agreements are legal (no doubt some aren't, but they've not been tested in court any more than the GPL ever has been). I do say that if you paid your money under that agreement, you can't shout "fraud" when you get what you paid for. If you don't like the license, take the whole lot back to the store and get your money back. If you don't understand the license and click "I agree" anyway, that's your problem.
Grab.