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Comment by keikobadthebad | Hacker News Reader

Thanks. It seems to beg the question for how long should there be some implied requirement to fix things, if you were just paid to work on a FOSS project (and what was paid for is available under a liberal license).

IOW if I got paid for some work on an existing project under a liberal license, what would I be getting myself into? (I assume the answer is 'nothing' if it happened before this directive, but if it happened after?)

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You don't know. The EU "makes laws", it is then to be interpreted by the member states into actual laws and then interpreted again by the judges of those member states. So you don't know.

However, I highly doubt that EU citizens and companies will now suddenly be willing to pay for liability insurance for people they buy software from (and that will be more expensive the smaller the developer and/or company is)

I am certain there are already established practices for "freelancer" liability since this kind of employment happens a lot in other industries.

However I'd be cautious when it comes to these finer details. It's where business liability insurances and lawyers a wise investment.

Today it really boils down to the buyer accepts the work (usually work done in the period) as reasonable and pays for it, or not. Sometimes there are contractual requirements to make good on bugs afterwards on your own time. But often the hirer accepts the risk of bugs needing solving.

This sounds like there might be extra requirements for an unending? unspecified? period, I don't see how anyone can make a living if so.

This kind of liability is not new Europe. In fact it applies to a lot of products. Therefore similar (though obviously not identical) questions are already settled law.

As a layman it may be similar to the questions of how long a manufacturer can be held responsible for material fatique under regular use?

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