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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] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

free and open-source software developed or supplied outside the course of a commercial activity

99% of open source software development is part of a commercial activity.

As I understand it - and I'm not sure I do - the act essentially makes contributors to open source software legally responsible for security. And the penalty for failing to comply is 15 million Euros.

Combine a fine I can't afford, with legislation I'm not qualified to understand (I am not a lawyer), and basically I'm just going to have to stop writing open source software. I can't afford to pay a lawyer to check if I'm in compliance, so I have to assume I could be fined. Which just isn't worth the risk.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

No it doesn't. It makes IBM responsible for what it ships in Red Hat, it doesn't apply to someone that made some library in their weekend that somehow ended up on all Linux distributions.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hows does the limitation of liability section in basically every open source license factor into this? It seems like you'd be fine as long as you aren't personally using the code commercially? Or would this new law somehow override the open source license?

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

The latter. The law always takes precedence over contract terms.