Re: Introduction and possible thread

["Keith Brown" <bahalana@wt.net>]

>> I noticed both Don and Jerry
>> expressed similar interests. The thing that stopped me though was
>> exposure to liability. I never discussed it with an attourney or other
>> legal authority, it was just my concern for my financial welfare.
><snip>
>> Anyone have any thoughts on this? Naturally, it'd be great is one of
>> was actually a lawyer and wanted to throw in his $.02 worth, on a
>> contingency basis, of course :-)
>
>My guess is that if you don't have anything, you are not likely to have
>a problem.  The reason the Aircraft makers where driven out of the small
>aircraft market was not so much their making aircraft as their
>appearance of having deep pockets.  Not may A&P's where named in civil
>actions and few would actually pay any losses because they generally
>don't have anything to give (even at $45 an hour...)
>
>Also... If you have a group of individuals who have no assets in common,
>who would you go after?
>
>I'm not in the leagal profession so you had better ask the attourney,
>but I don't think the I would have much to worry about.. They would not
>get much money out of me, so I doubt they would even try.

Well, you're probably right about lack of assets being a deterrent to
lawsuits. I guess at the time I was considering a shareware venture, and any
business of any type that doesn't carry liability insurance is pretty
foolish, and then having insurance, bang!, instantly you have deep enough
pockets to sue. I think an open source or other licensing scheme where the
product is free for non-commercial use and the source code is available
would probably not have this problem, though again, I'm not sure of the
legal principles or precedents involved. I know I've seen articles recently
in some of the usual open source news outlets about aerospace companies
flocking to open source technology for embedded systems like avionics and
such, so I'm sure they are satisfied they can cover their ends.

If someone really has a beef with you though, they may want to make your
life a living hell for a few years, whether they will get anything monetary
out of it or not. And if they *should* win a judgement against you, whether
you have it or not doesn't make it go away.


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