[pnathan]

You're conflating law and risk. One turns out to be a reified political thing reflecting the powers that be of times now and past, the other thing is an engineering concern. I'm quite personally familiar with the specialized domains of which you speak. I would say that our personal ethic of engineering quality totally dominated any legal questions. I'd guess we could have smokescreened any legal paperwork if we really wanted (cough, BMW emissions scandal cough). But, we didn't! We cared, as a company.

Re comma.io - having to play the legal game is a substantial existential risk, only mitigateable with very well paid lawyers and a decent PR crew. That's very different than providing an engineering report. I would guess that if they get rolling in China, they will come back and have the funding and will to hire lawyers to sort the problems.

If you want to contemplate the difficulty of doing engineering vs. surviving the law, consider Tesla's issues selling its car.

It's not the rap - it's the ride.