[SystemSafety] Personal and corporate liabilities as a consequence of safety, security and other mistakes of similar importance

[Olwen Morgan]

On 04/10/18 13:30, Martyn Thomas wrote:

<snip>

 >>> Explicitly prohibiting such use in the FOSS licence conditions 
might be considered to be enough to transfer
 >>> the duties under HSWA to the person or organisation that chose to 
ignore the licence conditions when
 >>> deciding to incorporate the FOSS in a safety-related application.

Microsoft Windows licences (at least for Win 7) had a clause roughly to 
the effect that it would be a breach of the licence terms if Windows 7 
were used in a system where it was reasonably foreseeable that 
malfunction could cause death or injury. I am aware, however, of 
circumstances in which an engineering manager had a teleconference with 
Microsoft's lawyers in which he claimed to have persuaded them that 
using Win7 in a neonatal ventilator did not fall foul of that clause. (I 
also have reason to believe that he also misrepresented the situation to 
the MS lawyers.)

The worrying point here is that the MS licence agreement, presumably 
drafted by MS lawyers, was intended to be airtight for commercial use 
but was unfortunately none too succinctly worded. If MS lawyers do a 
non-stellar job of contract wording, should we expect the terms of FOSS 
licences to be any better?


Olwen