Don’t want to Use Open Source Software because of liability issues?
“I don’t want to use Open Source Software in my business because of liability issues”
I hear/read this comment a lot. I’ve used it myself at times. The same is often said with free software.
How is off the shelf software, hardware, etc., less liability?
If you recommend something to a customer and it doesn’t work well, who is to blame? The vendor? The software? The moon in it’s phases?
Who is the customer going to see as liable?
They liked to use “who’s liable” at my last job at “Mega Insurance Corp Based in Bloomington, IL” a lot.
The powers that be needed someone to shift the blame to if something when wrong with the software or hardware.
We were prevented from using many useful tools because of this attitude/policy. For example We couldn’t use any sysinternals apps until MS bought them out. This was even after proving in test the usefulness and not having any problems.
If you are going to suggest a product you are going to be liable in some form if it doesn’t perform as expected.
In my case, when I’ve chosen not to use OSS for a customer there was a few factors that were involved:
- project was just starting or didn’t look like there was any maintainer.
- Support didn’t seem to be refined enough. lack of response on forums or bug-trackers.
- If I installed it would there be an easy switch to a commercial product if wanted by the customer for whatever reason.
- It would be too hard for the end-user to support if I wasn’t around anymore.
- Do I really want to mess with it?
“Liabilty issues” in this case can be a cop-out. The chances of a client being upset with you for a bad business decision is much greater than anything going wrong because you chose to use OSS in particular situation.
LJ Technical Services has been supporting and using various Free & Open Source Software for 15 years. Some of these are Linux, Backuppc, and GLPI.
I’ve never been sued and never regretted the savings and functionality that my customers received from using them.
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