Product Liability Directive
From 9 December 2026 software is a product under strict liability: what changes in the roadmap, the contract, and the specification you promised.
In 1932 Lord Atkin founded product liability on a simple premise: point at an object and find someone at the other end of it. Today’s software, co-produced by dependencies, models and agents, no longer satisfies that premise, and from 9 December 2026 the PLD treats it as a product anyway. The roadmap can no longer contain only features: it must contain declared maintenance, and software will be judged on the gap between what it promised and what it does. I write about that gap, and about who pays for it.