Will the European Cyber Resilience Act Kill Open Source Software? (fossforce.com)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by bbbhltz@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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Not a big fan of the title (asking question in the title isn't a great idea) but the conclusions give a good summary:

The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) represents a significant step in Europe’s efforts to enhance cybersecurity. However, its potential implications for the open source software community have raised serious concerns. Critics argue that the legislation, in its current form, could impose undue burdens on open source contributors and inadvertently increase the risk of software vulnerabilities being exploited.

New insights from GitHub’s blog post highlight additional concerns. The CRA could potentially introduce a burdensome compliance regime and penalties for open source projects that accept donations, thereby undermining the sustainability of these projects. It could also regulate open source projects unless they have “a fully decentralised development model,” potentially discouraging companies from allowing their employees to contribute to open source projects. Furthermore, the CRA could disrupt coordinated vulnerability disclosure by requiring any software developer to report to ENISA all actively exploited vulnerabilities within a timeline measured in hours after discovering them.

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[-] xthexder@l.sw0.com 5 points 11 months ago

This article seems poorly written and says the same thing over and over again with slightly different wording. I would have liked some more specifics.

The Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) could have several implications for the open source software sector:

Increased legal and financial responsibility

Deterrent effect on the development of open source software

Lack of consideration for the specificities of open source software

Lack of consultation of the open source software community

Only 2 of those are implications of the law. 3 and 4 are redundant and are not caused by the law's wording. They wouldn't even be a problem if not for 1. 2 is also caused by 1 in a fairly obvious way.

[-] bbbhltz@beehaw.org 1 points 11 months ago

I agree, but will say that English is not the author's native language. I thought it was a relevant share because the author has been part of the FOSS movement since the late 90s.