Thank you for the corrections, I think I maybe skimmed the text back when it went through the EP, so I was mostly going from (poor) memory.

My understanding is that this would allow for lawsuits along the lines of “Your poorly written software caused [our business to lose this giant contract|thousands of consumers left with bricked devices|my washing machine to eat my dog]. Now pay up!”

Essentially, software vendors (vendor being the operative word here) would become liable for damage caused by their faulty products, just like manufacturers of air compressors or toys or fireworks.

Indeed, Poul-Henning Kamp of bikeshed and BSD fame got a nice little discussion thread started yesterday over on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@bsdphk@fosstodon.org/113317528662477344

Yeah, I’m assuming developers in the big software companies are donning lifejackets due to the amount of palm sweat from the C-suites.