Brian Ristuccia writes:
> To help resolve these issues, clause ii) could be removed or be rephrased
> to restrict only the use of AOL's trademark and online service. Since
> these restrictions are already implicit in the AOL Instant Messanger
> service agreement, perhaps this term could be removed altogether.
Yes. It is really very difficult to say just what this clause means: the
word "disparaging" has no definite legal meaning so far as I know. I
suspect that AOL would find this clause very difficult to enforce. I also
doubt that AOL would ever feel the need to enforce it.
> The fields-of-endeavour clause could be rephrased to "Licensee represents
> and warrants that it understands such use is strongly disrecommended and
> at their own peril."
How about this?
"Licensee represents and warrants that it understands that this
software is not designed or intended to be used in such a way that its
failure could endanger human life. AOL strongly discourages such
uses."
This covers applications such as medical life support which the existing
clause misses.
It seems to me that AOL is very well protected here:
a) AOL is distributing the software universally and gratis. Thus AOL is
receiving no consideration from Licensee and therefor has no contract.
b) The above notice should suffice to prevent any prudent person from using
the software in a life-critical application.
c) Licensee has the source to the software and permission to modify it.
Thus he has the opportunity to examine it for defects and correct them.
> What other changes would the debian-legal folks recommend instead of or
> in additon to the ones I've mentioned above.
None.
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