The EU has been so far bad at making sure FOSS isn’t seen as a paid product in the eyes of regulation, even in cases where it’s clearly unpaid, see here. They can’t be trusted to get this differentiation right.
Therefore, unlockable bootloader seems like the better idea. Get people to Linux and open Android variants if the closed-source companies won’t serve them.
I have no idea what I’m supposed to see from you link? I don’t see any particular legal knowledge, or description of any particular legal consequences, and I have no idea what the point is???
Obviously software provided for free “as is”, cannot be required to be maintained. And if it is owned by the public which is the case with FOSS, there is no “owner” who can be made responsible.
If however the software is part of a commercial package, the one supplying the package has responsibility for the package supplied, you can’t just supply open source software as part of a commercial product, and waive all responsibility for your product in that regard.
I admit it’s a complex topic, but if you read the post in detail, it should answer your questions. The “owner” is typically the maintainer, if in doubt that’s the person with repository write access. And the EU can apparently potentially require whatever to be maintained, not that I understand the exact details. The point was that the regulation doesn’t seem to avoid FOSS fallout well.
Nope, AFAIK that is not legally applicable, that is very clear with licenses like MIT BSD etc, and for GPL in all versions it’s very explicitly stated in the license.
You can also release as simply public domain, which very obviously means nobody owns as it is owned by everybody.
Generally if you give something away for free, you can’t be claimed to be the owner.
I have no idea where that idea should come from, some typical anti EU alarmists maybe? And I bet there is zero legal precedent for that. And I seriously doubt any lawyer would support your claim.
If however you choose a license where the creator keeps ownership it may be different, but then it’s not FOSS.
The EU has been so far bad at making sure FOSS isn’t seen as a paid product in the eyes of regulation, even in cases where it’s clearly unpaid, see here. They can’t be trusted to get this differentiation right.
Therefore, unlockable bootloader seems like the better idea. Get people to Linux and open Android variants if the closed-source companies won’t serve them.
I have no idea what I’m supposed to see from you link? I don’t see any particular legal knowledge, or description of any particular legal consequences, and I have no idea what the point is???
Obviously software provided for free “as is”, cannot be required to be maintained. And if it is owned by the public which is the case with FOSS, there is no “owner” who can be made responsible.
If however the software is part of a commercial package, the one supplying the package has responsibility for the package supplied, you can’t just supply open source software as part of a commercial product, and waive all responsibility for your product in that regard.
I admit it’s a complex topic, but if you read the post in detail, it should answer your questions. The “owner” is typically the maintainer, if in doubt that’s the person with repository write access. And the EU can apparently potentially require whatever to be maintained, not that I understand the exact details. The point was that the regulation doesn’t seem to avoid FOSS fallout well.
Nope, AFAIK that is not legally applicable, that is very clear with licenses like MIT BSD etc, and for GPL in all versions it’s very explicitly stated in the license.
You can also release as simply public domain, which very obviously means nobody owns as it is owned by everybody.
Generally if you give something away for free, you can’t be claimed to be the owner.
I have no idea where that idea should come from, some typical anti EU alarmists maybe? And I bet there is zero legal precedent for that. And I seriously doubt any lawyer would support your claim.
If however you choose a license where the creator keeps ownership it may be different, but then it’s not FOSS.