On Fri, 3 Jun 2011, PJ Weisberg wrote:
I've seen plenty of software in Debian with a clause similar to #4, usually phrased something like "$foo is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE." I don't see how it could make a difference that this license names one particular purpose that the authors don't guarantee that the software is fit for.
The difference is that those basically say "we don't provide..." and this one says "you acknowledge that..." and "you agree that...." In this one we are requiring the user to do something (acknowledge and agree to things) that he might not want to do and which may put him at a disadvantage at some point in the future. If your example said "the user acknowledges that we provide no implied warranty" it would have the same problem.