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

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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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[–] zero_iq@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Open source software is also notably lacking from the impact assessment documents, but I suspect this is because it was intended to not impact open source software at all. It seems the legislation intends to exclude open-source software, but doesn't clearly and unambiguously exclude open source software that is developed or contributed to in a commercial setting (e.g by paid contributors).

I think the wording seems clear enough to determine the intent, but the ambiguity surrounding the "commercial activity" part might necessitate trial (which nobody wants to risk), or might lead to poor implementation of this directive in the laws of member states. I think we should be campaigning to improve the wording, not reject it outright.