Re: Warranty disclaimers with SHOUTY CAPITALS

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au> writes:

> For what it's worth, the GPLv3 drafters researched the commonly-held
> belief that SHOUTY CAPITALS are required for warranty disclaimers,
> and concluded there was no such requirement:
> 
>     The warranty exclusions that were in GPL2 have not been changed
>     saving one way: I took them out of all uppercase.
> 
>     [...] because no lawyer on Earth knows [why] they aren't in mixed
>     case and everybody seems to think that everybody else knows and
>     that he's the only one that doesn't know and he was absent that
>     day in law school.
> 
>     <URL:http://www.ifso.ie/documents/gplv3-launch-2006-01-16.html#em-warranty>

Sadly, checking the released version of GPLv3, I see that the sections
"15. Disclaimer of Warranty." and "16. Limitation of Liability." both
contain all text in SHOUTY CAPITALS.

That's disappointing :-( I wasn't aware they'd been reverted from
readable text. It must have happened shortly before the release.

> > so the board may want to check their local legal position before
> > finalising the non-shouty version.
> 
> If the board reveals something more substantive on the reason for
> writing disclaimers in SHOUTY CAPITALS than "because that's what
> everyone says you have to do", I'm sure many people would be
> interested.

This still stands. I'm still entirely unaware of what the legal reason
is.

-- 
 \       "It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do |
  `\       is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument |
_o__)                     will play itself."  -- Johann Sebastian Bach |
Ben Finney