[luckylion]

I'm not a lawyer, but I see no way a sane and reasonable person could read this as "and if someone you've supplied the software in a foss & non-commercial setting to uses that software in a commercial way, you're on the hook for everything".

Yeah, it could be even clearer (but laws tend to not want to enumerate everything that is obvious or they'd become books), but it feels somewhat exaggerated. Or is the actual fear that commercial support services by the authors could trigger liability? As far as I understand, that has been a preferred way to get paid and remain not-liable for the original product.

[ncphil]

I _was_ a lawyer for a decade before going into tech. One of the good habits I acquired in practice was making sure to read all the way through every document, no matter how boring it got. I agree with you completely, except the article isn't just exaggerated: it's borderline FUD. Regulation is necessary because too many humans find self-regulation in the public interest too hard. The problem is that writing effective, targeted, regulations is also hard, and often beyond the capacity of those given the power to do it. Even when they mean well (never a given, as evidenced by a sordid history of self-sealing and favoritism), it often gets mucked up.