Re: infos about alien licenses
On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 11:25:54AM +0100, Stephen Gran wrote:
> This one time, at band camp, Matthew Palmer said:
> > On Wed, Apr 12, 2006 at 02:35:28PM +0200, Wolfgang Lonien wrote:
> > >
> > > THIS SOFTWARE IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND SHOULD NOT BE USED IN ANY
> > > SITUATION ENDANGERING HUMAN LIFE OR PROPERTY.
> >
> > This is possibly problematic, depending on how you define "should". I'd
> > take it as just being a restatement of the whole "no warranty, if it breaks
> > you get to keep both pieces" thing, but it could be read as forbidding use
> > in the mentioned areas.
>
> The word 'should' has a fairly straight forward meaning in the English
> language.
I just had a look at 'dict should' and it was a bit more complicated than
you make out. There's also the legal English alternative -- there's plenty
of words that have different interpretation in legal documents than they do
in colloquial usage.
If you read the rest of the thread, though, you'll note that I came to
essentially the same conclusion as you, but it would be remiss not to point
out the potential problem for clarification and further discussion.
> This does not present a problem, as far as I can see. It is
> substantively no different from the standard:
>
> Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
> permitted by applicable law.
>
> It is a disclaimer telling you they take no responsibility if you use it
> in a situation that endagers human life or property. No problem.
It is substantially different if the copyright holder interprets the clause
to mean that you have no licence to exercise your DFSG rights if you use the
software in the named situation. Hence the desire for clarification.
- Matt
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