Why on earth would they make the original vendor of a component liable instead of the last corporate vendor wholly liable for all components of the final product they sell? This seems like something which can only benefit:
1) very large corporations
2) who use a lot of components they don’t make
This seems almost designed as protectionist legislation for dinosaur companies unable to manage their software dependencies at any level of competence.
Yep, it's interesting because this is the case in eg. device warranties... if something breaks down, you don't search who the manufacturer of the capacitor was, but just take the device to the seller/retailer/store and have them deal with it.
Mostly. There are some exceptions. For example, with cars, tires are often warrantied directly with the tire manufacturer. Also, in the case of material defect, e.g. the airbag issue a number of years back, the auto manufacturer is mostly the entity on the hook for consumers but there are absolutely various liabilities up the supply chain.
For sure, it’s reasonable that the airbag vendor, having sold a product to the auto vendor, is liable to the auto vendor.
I don’t think the airbag vendor should be separately liable to the user since it’s the auto vendor’s responsibility to ensure that the holistic system works- even without considering the case of open source wherein there’s no contract at all between the OSS “vendor” and either the immediate “buyer” or end customer.
Takata was sued by various parties (consumer class actions, at least one state) over their airbag defect although I'm not sure what the outcome was over and above the settlement by the various auto makers.
People can sue for pretty much anything and there's a good chance you have to (or at least should) get a lawyer if that happens. While it's arguably negligible, there is some risk in putting tools/code out there even if it's free and not warrantied.
Not sure about tires, but atleast here, the seller has to deal with warranties, even if the warranty is made by the manufacturer... so if i buy a Sumsing(TM) phone, I don't have to drive half a country away for them to service it, but I can just drop it at the shop I bought it at and have them deal with it.
If something warranty-worthy happened with a tire, I'd just take it to the dealer and have them deal with it.
Because the EU wants to make sure someone else than the user liable for everything. Fully controlling the Internet is part of this development. It started with cookie laws and is now creeping towards total controlism a la China.
In the EUs model of social democracy citizens does not need to bear responsibility for their actions, but it’s government’s job to enforce everything is in harmony. “Someone else” e.g. corporates are responsible for any negative outcomes. Whether or not open source, or many other Internet produced contents, fits into this model is secondary. This is also very easy for politicians to sell as the evil is always outside (US corporations, China, Russia) and there is never anything wrong with country or its citizens themselves. If people can go to Internet and hurt themselves e.g. by downloading an application or a package of course it must be someone else’s liability.
1) very large corporations
2) who use a lot of components they don’t make
This seems almost designed as protectionist legislation for dinosaur companies unable to manage their software dependencies at any level of competence.