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Rygianyesterday at 4:27 PM3 repliesview on HN

While assuming absolutely zero bad will on your part, I would nevertheless find it fair if you were legally on the hook for whatever happened after the sale, unless you could prove that you provided reasonable means for the users of your extension to perform their due diligence on the new owner of the extension.

This is of course easy to say in hindsight, and is absolutely a requirement that should be enforced by the extension appstore, not by individual contributors such as yourself.


Replies

deancyesterday at 6:53 PM

I wouldn't find that fair at all. Bad actors should be legally responsible for their bad action. If I sell you a taxi business, and then all of a sudden you decide to start robbing the customers - it's not my fault is it? And just to be clear, I had no idea if my extension was used for nefarious purposes, but in hindsight it probably was.

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eliyesterday at 5:01 PM

How would that even work? What if the seemingly clean buyer sells it to someone else scammy?

Chris2048yesterday at 7:20 PM

No, how it should work is each extension is associated with a private key that is registered with a specific individual or legal entity and implies some kind of liability for anything signed with that key - and if/when the key changes (or the associated credentials), users will be explicitely alerted and need to re-authenticate the plugin.

If the old owner gives their key to the new owner, then they should be on the hook for it. I was thinking of this yesterday, as I think this is also how domains should work.