[consulting] Contract > Developer liable for bugs?

[Morbus Iff]

I've been writing software (for hire or otherwise) for ten years or so.

I've never run into an instance, or heard of a case where, once a piece 
of software has been "shipped" or "finished", the developer of that 
software is liable for Things That Go Wrong With It. (I'm exempting 
trojans and viruses, etc. - assume legitimate software here).

Specifically, I've received a contract for a new job which states that I 
(as the Consultant) would be financially liable for any bugs in my 
created Drupal code. I balked that I'd never heard of such a thing 
before and received a revised version which now reads like this:

   "The Consultant will also be responsible for any damage, loss or
   liability (whether criminal or civil) of or suffered by  the
   Company ... in connection with any act or omission of the
   Consultant ... In order to compensate for this, the Consultant
   agrees to resolve any issue with his code (and his code only)
   as it arises at no additional cost to the Company. Correcting
   the problem code is the limit of liability to which the
   Consultant will be held."

I'm still cautious about this - while the final two lines state that my 
only liability is fixing bugs for free (which is perfectly fine with 
me), the first line still contains scares like "civil" and "criminal 
liability", "damage" and "loss". Being "responsible" for "loss" still 
sounds like I'd pay money if "problem code" caused financial damage.

A few questions:

  * has anyone else seen something like this?

  * has anyone else /agreed/ to something like this?

  * are my worries about financial responsibility accurate?

  * how should I respond to this?

-- 
Morbus Iff ( and think about the bad things that I didn't do )
Technical: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/779
Enjoy: http://www.disobey.com/ and http://www.videounderbelly.com/
aim: akaMorbus / skype: morbusiff / icq: 2927491 / jabber.org: morbus