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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rick Kelly [mailto:rmk@toad.rmkhome.com]=20
> Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2002 6:34 PM
> To: Charles Shannon Hendrix
> Cc: NetBSD User's Discussion List
> Subject: Re: IP: Wal-Mart PC, Operating System *Not*=20
> Included: $399 (fwd)
>=20
>=20
> Charles Shannon Hendrix said:
>=20
> >Interesting you said this, because in fact Microsoft is behind some=20
> >proposed legislation which basically absolves a software=20
> producer like=20
> >them from any fault whatsoever for poor quality software.
>=20
> Bill Gates should have a public execution, and then his head=20
> should be displayed on a pike.

I dunno if such legislation is, or is not, a good idea, since I haven't
read much on it.  However, it seems like a dumb idea to be able to sue a
software company for producing software with bugs.  Last time I checked,
almost all software had bugs. =20

If NetBSD had a bug that caused a business to lose billions of dollars
because someone slipped in a change to the source with an unintended
side-effect that nobody caught, who would get sued?  The person who made
the change?  Or the dozens of people who reviewed it?  I should point
out that even the BSD-variants still get and fix security bugs, which
are the most costly bugs to exploit in the wild. =20

Oh, and can you then sue the company if it produced a fix you just
didn't happen to download?  Think about it. =20

-Dave