SCO and Software Liability: What To Consider

mristau writes "I wrote my senior thesis on the problems of software liability in the context of both proprietary and open source software development. I used the SCO v. IBM issues as a basis for further hypothetical analysis. The work provides sufficient technical background for a general audience. I'm not a legal scholar so my analysis isn't perfect, but the issues are relevant to us all."

Re:Mirror?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's some sort of modern poetry in the fact that you can't browse an educational site for information, although you can see it linked from the timehole that is /.

Perhaps in haiku form. Anyone?

Re:Mirror?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it is assumed to be an adult site because a female name is part of the url. Censor-ware has done dumber things.

Her paper suggests certification...

[tcopeland]

... as a final goal. I wonder which she feels would be more effective - certification in the sense of process - i.e., CMM levels? Or certification of individual programmers?

It sounds like she favors the latter - I'd be interested to hear what she thinks (and why).

Here's the abstract

[Anonymous Coward]

Software liability increasingly affects software developers and computer users. Programmers today typically subscribe to one of two main paradigms of software development: proprietary development or open source development. Each model presents unique problems of legal liability. Proprietary development puts software firms and individual programmers at potentially enormous risk if their work harms others. Open source development muddies the waters of authorship and legal responsibility extensively while put