The European regulators listened to the Open Source communities!
The European regulators listened to the Open Source communities!
Open Source communities defended developers and foundations against risks posed by the CRA to Open Source development, and their voices were heard. Workshops being offered at FOSDEM offer a chance for others to participate moving forward.
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clearly ensure that responsibility for CE marks does not rest with any actor who is not a direct commercial beneficiary of deployment
Does that apply to open source hardware? Like, can I make a crane that absolutely kills people due to mechanical errors in the design (unintentional) or a space heater that catches fire or a e-Bike that explodes someone's nuts off and be ok?
If you are making a crane, I find it hard to believe you would give the crane itself away for free, since you have to recoup your costs. So that point you are selling cranes and engaging in commerce, so they have jurisdiction to regulate you.
If you make and publish designs for a crane, or you speculate on how cranes ought to be built, it's your right to free speech. Think about it, even an engineering textbook must describe how to design an unsafe bridge to teach you how to build a safe one. It will show you examples of famous collapsed bridges, perhaps with full blueprints and design instructions.
I'm talking about designs. Like full CAD and step-by-step documentation.
So someone else follows your designs, builds the thing, and dies. The reason tbey died is objectively due to a design flaw, not a mistske in building to spec. Does the EU make you legally liable?
EU don't, but you need to make sure about the country in which you operated the crane as each EU country has its own laws and EU directives are not laws.
I doubt you can be held responsible in such a case unless you are a civil engineer enabled to publish such designs and you did so by stating that those designs are in fact good to go.
If I build my own crane and die or, worse, kill somebody operating it I am the only one responsible even if my uncle told me how to do so.