product liability (was 'we should all be uncomfortable with the extent to which luck..')

Henry Yen henry at AegisInfoSys.com
Thu Jul 26 04:16:15 UTC 2001


On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 09:48:47AM +0000, Joseph T. Klein wrote:
> Since software, in theory, can't cause physical danger, I suspect
> the shrink wrap license makes Microsoft immune to any liability.
> 
> If they advertise false claims then they could punishable under some
> states consumer protection laws. Look for the disclaimers.
> 
> Now if you claim that you are forced to agree to the shrink wrap
> licence because of they are a monopoly and you are forced to use
> the product ... an iffy argument ... then you may have a something.

A number of legal minds apparently are of the opinion that the recent
Appeals court ruling helps open up that exact legal pinhole, a bit.

However, ISTR that Microsoft recently had a number of suits in
various state courts thrown out for lack of standing; IIRC Microsoft's
claim that the Windows installations on new machines were a sale from
Microsoft to the OEM, not Microsoft to the end-user, and therefore
end-users were not eligible to sue Microsoft directly.  I haven't
bought an OEM machine in quite some time, but I think it's still the
policy for Windows-based machines to indicate that if you have "any"
problems (including software), that you have to go back to the
hardware manufacturer for help, _not_ Microsoft.  Although having
no clue on the stats, I would assume that off-the-shelf purchases
of Windows are not the majority of Windows "sales".

Also, there's an element in the "Windows/IIS patches are freely available,
so if an admin didn't patch, it's mostly his fault, no matter how
crappy Windows/IIS might have been designed" thread, namely, that
for the longest time, installing patches in most Windows systems was
a dangerous undertaking; a significant portion of the time, installing
a patch would/could cause something else to break, or even render the
system unusable.  This aspect has kept many Windows admins that I know
from doing _anything_ to their systems except for dire emergencies, or
well-tested (i.e. out in the field for several months, and tested on
_other_ people's machines) service packs.  Many of these difficulties
were characterized either in being required to figure out to apply
service packs and interim patches in exactly the right order (with exactly
the right set of reboots), or in ending up reinstalling because
Microsoft technical support didn't have the depth to be able to help
with a complicated service pack / patch situation.

-- 
Henry Yen                                       Aegis Information Systems, Inc.
Senior Systems Programmer                       Hicksville, New York



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