Re: OpenSSL and GPLed programs
"none" <chloehoffman@hotmail.com> writes:
> I am not sure I understand the significance of the difference here and what
> "issue" I am confusing - perhaps you can enlighten me on your position.
> Copyright infringement may occur whether you fail to comply with a license
> or whether you breach a contract. Last I looked at Nimmer (the leading U.S.
> treatise on copyright law) it pointed to contract law for license
> interpretation.
Most licenses are also contracts. It's reasonable to decide that the
canons of license interpretation should be as similar as possible to
the canons of contract interpretation (though there are many necessary
differences in the case of non-contractual licenses).
> Please name some so we have something to work from.
The GPL; the old BSD license; the X Consortium license.
> And what is the other theory of the defensibility of the limitation of
> liability? I am honestly interested.
If I give you a gift, I'm not liable for the fact that the gift
doesn't work as expected (fitness for a particular purpose), or that
the gift is not up to the usual standards of saleable merchandise
(merchantability). Those two implied warranties, thus, are not
necessarily associated with gifts in the way that they are associated
with sales. At the same time, it is wise to bend over backwards to
make clear that one is disclaiming any implied warranty that might
exist.
Since in general implied warranties can be disclaimed, it's good
practice to disclaim them any time you don't intend to give them. You
don't need any contract at all to disclaim those warranties; and in
some jurisdictions there are implied warranties you are not allowed to
disclaim. Whether those warranties apply to free software is
something no court has ruled on AFAIK; I think it would be ludicrous
to say they do apply, but you never know.
> I don't think I have ever cast any doubt on your abilities or knowledge or
> anybody else. Just attempting to engage in some friendly debate. Perhaps
> this thread has run its course.
It's not a place to debate software licenses in the abstract. This is
a place for the Debian project to discuss which licenses are
compatible with our goals. Perhaps you want the gnu.misc.discuss
newsgroup, which in part does exist to debate the merits of various
licenses.
I'm sorry that I went overboard in impugning your contributions; you
are certainly welcome here.
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