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Will the European Cyber Resilience Act Kill Open Source Software? (fossforce.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Not a big fan of the title (asking question in the title isn't a great idea) but the conclusions give a good summary:

The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) represents a significant step in Europe’s efforts to enhance cybersecurity. However, its potential implications for the open source software community have raised serious concerns. Critics argue that the legislation, in its current form, could impose undue burdens on open source contributors and inadvertently increase the risk of software vulnerabilities being exploited.

New insights from GitHub’s blog post highlight additional concerns. The CRA could potentially introduce a burdensome compliance regime and penalties for open source projects that accept donations, thereby undermining the sustainability of these projects. It could also regulate open source projects unless they have “a fully decentralised development model,” potentially discouraging companies from allowing their employees to contribute to open source projects. Furthermore, the CRA could disrupt coordinated vulnerability disclosure by requiring any software developer to report to ENISA all actively exploited vulnerabilities within a timeline measured in hours after discovering them.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

In words of Dan Geer from his 2014 Black Hat keynote:

Today the relevant legal concept is "product liability" and the
fundamental formula is "If you make money selling something, then
you better do it well, or you will be held responsible for the
trouble it causes." For better or poorer, the only two products
not covered by product liability today are religion and software,
and software should not escape for much longer.

The EU legislation has good intentions. Software should not escape product liability. However, the current proposal is somewhat flawed (unless EU actually intends to finance security testing for FOSS projects!) and it needs some language to protect open-source innovation and distributed development models.

I'm hoping the EU will allow a model where FOSS developers can receive donations/charge for support without having to risk huge penalties.