On Thu, Jan 26, 2006 at 12:12:55PM +0400, olive wrote:
olive> Non-warranty clause are illegal in Europe. However the warranty applies
olive> only in the case of commercial transaction. I am not sure you can claim
olive> any warranty for a software that you have downloaded at no cost; wether
olive> it has a non-waranty clause or not. But it is true that if you sell a
olive> GPL software (or other free or non-free software); you must provides a
olive> warranty (at least in Europe). This warranty cover only "what is
olive> normally expected for the software by a normal user": it does not say
olive> that you can sue the person who have sell you the software for any bugs
olive> it may contain.
Er, no. There is an automatic warranty in sales, but you can contractually
dismiss it. And licensing software is not selling it. I do concede
that that to which you refer is a common (but erreoneous) perception.
The only tricky questions are that of gross misconduct of the
licensor, which can only be dismissed by explicit provisions of a
contract, and it is disputed whether or not clauses such as those
found in the GPL and other free software licenses are specific enough.
But basically apart from that they are valid. Having written pretty
thoroughly about the subject, I have Belgian (and to a lesser extent,
french) references galore if you wish. I can send you the article if
it is of interest to you.