North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical WANAL (Re: What could have been done differently?)
[email protected] ("Eric Germann") writes: > Not to sound to pro-MS, but if they are going to sue, they should be able > to sue ALL software makers. And what does that do to open source? > Apache, MySQL, OpenSSH, etc have all had their problems. ... Don't forget BIND, we've had our problems as well. Our license says: /* * [Portions] Copyright (c) xxxx-yyyy by Internet Software Consortium. * * Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any * purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above * copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies. * * THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND INTERNET SOFTWARE CONSORTIUM DISCLAIMS * ALL WARRANTIES WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES * OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL INTERNET SOFTWARE * CONSORTIUM BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL * DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR * PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS * ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS * SOFTWARE. */ I believe that Apache and the others you mention do the same. Disclaiming fitness for use, and requiring that the maker be held harmless, only works when the software is fee-free. Microsoft can get you to click "Accept" as often as they want and keep records of the fact that you clicked it, but in every state I know about, fitness for use is implied by the presence of fee and cannot be disclaimed even by explicit agreement from the end user. B2B considerations are different -- I'm talking about consumer rights not overall business liability. In any case, all of these makers (including Microsoft) seem to make a very good faith effort to get patches out when vulnerabilities are uncovered. I wish we could have put time bombs in older BINDs to force folks to upgrade, but that brings more problems than it takes away, so a lot of folks run old broken software even though our web page tells them not to. Note: IANAL. -- Paul Vixie
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