Dear Debian Fellows, Following the email sent by Ilu to debian-project (Message-ID: <4b93ed08-f148-4c7f-b172-f967f7de7e4d@gmx.net>), and as we have discussed during the MiniDebConf UY 2023 with other Debian Members, I would like to call for a vote about issuing a Debian public statement regarding the EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and the Product Liability Directive (PLD). The CRA is in the final stage in the legislative process in the EU Parliament, and we think it will impact negatively the Debian Project, users, developers, companies that rely on Debian, and the FLOSS community as a whole. Even if the CRA will be probably adopted before the time the vote ends (if it takes place), we think it is important to take a public stand about it. ----- GENERAL RESOLUTION STARTS ----- Debian Public Statement about the EU Cyber Resilience Act and the Product Liability Directive The European Union is currently preparing a regulation "on horizontal cybersecurity requirements for products with digital elements" known as the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). It's currently in the final "trilogue" phase of the legislative process. The act includes a set of essential cybersecurity and vulnerability handling requirements for manufacturers. It will require products to be accompanied by information and instructions to the user. Manufacturers will need to perform risk assessments and produce technical documentation and for critical components, have third-party audits conducted. Discoverded security issues will have to be reported to European authorities within 24 hours (1). The CRA will be followed up by the Product Liability Directive (PLD) which will introduce compulsory liability for software. More information about the proposed legislation and its consequences in (2). While a lot of these regulations seem reasonable, the Debian project believes that there are grave problems for Free Software projects attached to them. Therefore, the Debian project issues the following statement: 1. Free Software has always been a gift, freely given to society, to take and to use as seen fit, for whatever purpose. Free Software has proven to be an asset in our digital age and the proposed EU Cyber Resilience Act is going to be detrimental to it. a. It is Debian's goal to "make the best system we can, so that free works will be widely distributed and used." Imposing requirements such as those proposed in the act makes it legally perilous for others to redistribute our works and endangers our commitment to "provide an integrated system of high-quality materials _with no legal restrictions_ that would prevent such uses of the system". (3) b. Knowing whether software is commercial or not isn't feasible, neither in Debian nor in most free software projects - we don't track people's employment status or history, nor do we check who finances upstream projects. c. If upstream projects stop developing for fear of being in the scope of CRA and its financial consequences, system security will actually get worse instead of better. d. Having to get legal advice before giving a present to society will discourage many developers, especially those without a company or other organisation supporting them. 2. Debian is well known for its security track record through practices of responsible disclosure and coordination with upstream developers and other Free Software projects. We aim to live up to the commitment made in the Social Contract: "We will not hide problems." (3) a. The Free Software community has developed a fine-tuned, well working system of responsible disclosure in case of security issues which will be overturned by the mandatory reporting to European authorities within 24 hours (Art. 11 CRA). b. Debian spends a lot of volunteering time on security issues, provides quick security updates and works closely together with upstream projects, in coordination with other vendors. To protect its users, Debian regularly participates in limited embargos to coordinate fixes to security issues so that all other major Linux distributions can also have a complete fix when the vulnerability is disclosed. c. Security issue tracking and remediation is intentionally decentralized and distributed. The reporting of security issues to ENISA and the intended propagation to other authorities and national administrations would collect all software vulnerabilities in one place, greatly increasing the risk of leaking information about vulnerabilities to threat actors, representing a threat for all the users around the world, including European citizens. d. Activists use Debian (e.g. through derivatives such as Tails), among other reasons, to protect themselves from authoritarian governments; handing threat actors exploits they can use for oppression is against what Debian stands for. e. Developers and companies will downplay security issues because a "security" issue now comes with legal implications. Less clarity on what is truly a security issue will hurt users by leaving them vulnerable. 3. While proprietary software is developed behind closed doors, Free Software development is done in the open, transparent for everyone. To keep even with proprietary software the open development process needs to be entirely exempt from CRA requirements, just as the development of software in private is. A "making available on the market" can only be considered after development is finished and the software is released. 4. Even if only "commercial activities" are in the scope of CRA, the Free Software community - and as a consequence, everybody - will lose a lot of small projects. CRA will force many small enterprises and most probably all self employed developers out of business because they simply cannot fullfill the requirements imposed by CRA. Debian and other Linux distributions depend on their work. It is not understandable why the EU aims to cripple not only an established community but also a thriving market. CRA needs an exemption for small businesses and, at the very least, solo-entrepreneurs. ========================================================================== Sources: (1) CRA proposals and links: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-a-europe-fit-for-the-digital-age/file-proposal-for-cybersecurity-regulation PLD proposals and links: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-a-europe-fit-for-the-digital-age/file-new-product-liability-directive (2) Background information: https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2023/01/24/tdf-position-on-eus-proposed-cyber-resilience-act/ https://blogs.eclipse.org/post/mike-milinkovich/european-cyber-resilience-act-potential-impact-eclipse-foundation https://labs.ripe.net/author/maarten-aertsen/open-source-software-vs-the-proposed-cyber-resilience-act/ https://blog.opensource.org/author/webmink/ Detailed analysis: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/13410-Cyber-resilience-act-new-cybersecurity-rules-for-digital-products-and-ancillary-services/F3376542_en (3) Debian Social Contract No. 2, 3 and 4 https://www.debian.org/social_contract ----- GENERAL RESOLUTION ENDS ----- Cheers, -- Santiago
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