Someone should sue them, for knowingly, willlingly releasing bug ridden, security issue laden software.
Seriously.
This is a perfect test case.
It should start with a 15 day demand letter, and progress from there.
Seriously.
This is a perfect test case.
It should start with a 15 day demand letter, and progress from there.
Stop using their software. Stop bullying people with lawyers.
> This is a perfect test case.
Indeed, and maybe your legal theory fails.
News that Apache had been forbidden to perform downloads to France, and then more places, might help raise awareness that it shouldn't be downloaded at all, nohow.
Maybe it would even push Apache to stop offering it entirely, and to link to the Libreoffice site instead.
I would be surprised, as such disclaimers are included in the official French flavor of the GPL family (http://cecill.info/licences.fr.html); section 8.2.
The European approach to consumer protections is generally more about ensuring that things are safe by default than about warnings and disclaimers. A lot depends on the expected competence of the target audience. If you distribute professional tools directly to professionals, they can be expected to read the warnings and understand that misuse could be dangerous. If you market and distribute something to the general public, ensuring safety is your responsibility.
Why assume when you could check? Because the license text shows that you're wrong, just read section 8.2 once again.
One is an innocent problem. The other is willful negligence.
And we need to start suing for this sort of thing. We need fines for companies willingly causing harm.
I think the reason you’re getting downvotes is that Apache is a non profit foundation, not a for profit company. So fining them isn’t going to do a lot of good (as well as being very unlikely to succeed)
Why?
I don't see why fining non-profits is any less effective than fining for-profits.
A fine per day, until compliance, can motivate well.
Being nonprofit doesn't mean you can willingly hurt people (getting hacked) either.
That said, it is hard to understand why they resist good sense now.
Except, "Apache is where free software projects go to die."
Sue them... for what? What do you plan to put in your paperwork? What are you going to say to the judge?
rm will unapologetically delete files instead of using the "trash bin" semantics that many people are used to. Some would define that as "faulty", and it can certainly cause "harm" (a "rm fuckup" is almost a rite of passage).
You can find many such almost banal examples, ranging from well-known tools to some project a student uploaded on GitHub that sees basically 0 traffic. Opening up Open Office to a lawsuit also means opening up countless GitHub projects from 15-year olds riddled with SQL injections and the like, but also things I put on my GitHub five years ago and don't really care about. Ignoring a PR would mean risking a lawsuit.
Plus, do we really want government involved in telling us what software we can and can't put on the internet? Because that's what this would mean.
"They should be sued for distributing outdated insecure software" is a fun one-liner, but the ramifications if it would actually happen are huge and almost entirely negative for the Open Source world.