[consulting] Contract > Developer liable for bugs?

[Kevin Amerson]

Sounds fine since your limit of liability is to fix the code.  I've seen
this before but have always attached a duration to it, like you'll support
it for six months or something post production.

Always have a lawyer review your contracts ;).

Kevin

On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 5:06 PM, Morbus Iff <morbus at disobey.com> wrote:

>
> 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
> _______________________________________________
> consulting mailing list
> consulting at drupal.org
> http://lists.drupal.org/mailman/listinfo/consulting
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/attachments/20080806/29c4c55d/attachment.htm