[lsb-discuss] LSB conf call notes for 2008-07-30

Anthony W. Youngman wol at thewolery.demon.co.uk
Tue Aug 12 15:10:34 PDT 2008


In message 
<B843EFF76B1F7D4FB8CB3DF974497A8D02CD9792 at be07-vsms.vsms.state.vt.us>, 
"Cort, Tom" <Tom.Cort at state.vt.us> writes
>> Heck, if they shippe Kaffe and gcj they are open to a
>> certain amount of risk.  And of course, someone could sue a
>> distribution if Linux doesn't work correctly, or if a contributor
>> sneaks a back door into emacs, or vi, or gcc, or any one of the
>> thousands of packages that compose a Linux distribution.
>
>Doesn't the "WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY" disclaimer in most software licenses
>protect developers/distributors against those types of lawsuits? For
>example, the GPL instructs programmers to have this paragraph at the top
>of each source file...

It doesn't...
>
>* This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
>* but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
>* MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
>* GNU General Public License for more details.

In some jurisdictions, such clauses have no legal effect - they are 
explicitly voided by law.

Cheers,
Wol
-- 
Anthony W. Youngman - anthony at thewolery.demon.co.uk




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