Comment by ApolloFortyNine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ApolloFortyNine | Hacker News Reader

ApolloFortyNine

> In order not to hamper innovation or research, this Directive should not apply to free and open-source software developed or supplied outside the course of a commercial activity, since products so developed or supplied are by definition not placed on the market. Developing or contributing to such software should not be understood as making it available on the market. Providing such software on open repositories should not be considered as making it available on the market, unless that occurs in the course of a commercial activity

Can't this wording easily be interpreted that commercial entities publishing open source software counts as a commercial activity? Wouldn't that kill corporate sponsored open source overnight? You could even argue Redhat (IBM) would be responsible for every user of any of their linux kernel patches/services no?

If not, what does this wording actually apply to?

That guy in Nebraska from the XKCD comic is probably safe.

I'm not convinced that my one-man company is, since I derive most of my income from FOSS software.

But that seems quite fair to me.

Only now every user of the software in Europe has recourse to sue you if you make a mistake, instead of just your paying customers.

Your total liability went to infinity overnight (in 2026 anyways).

>I'm not convinced that my one-man company is, since I derive most of my income from FOSS software.

It's a bit of a problem that it's hard to even tell as well.

> Only now every user of the software in Europe has recourse to sue you if you make a mistake, instead of just your paying customers.

Only if they somehow directly got it from GP, through some kind of commercial thing. I doubt downloading stuff from Github for personal use qualifies.

The way I read it, this directive wants to ensure that for any digital product sold on the EU market, there exist some entity that can be sued in EU jurisdiction; within the Union, that would be the vendor; outside - a vendor representative, or an importer. Which is a perfectly reasonable expectation to have, and it's how it mostly works with physical goods and services (aliexpress notwithstanding).

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