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Re: some legal terms in the new disclaimers



On Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 09:06:06PM +0100, Josip Rodin wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Please explain these so I (and others) can translate in
> www.d.o/MailingLists/disclaimer:
> 
> "all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness"
> 
> I can understand an implied warranty of fitness, but merchantability? How
> exactly do we implicitely guarantee that the stuff on the mailing lists is
> sellable? :)

You'll have to ask a lawyer.  In some jurisdictions it is necessary to
explicitly disavow warranties of merchantibility and fitness for a
particular purpose.

> "of any kind whatsoever"
> 
> Isn't merely "of any kind" or "whatsoever" enough?

This is a phrase I have borrowed from some existing legal boilerplates I
have read.  I see no harm in retaining "whatsoever".

> "loss of use"
> 
> I simply have no idea what this means in this context :)

It means if somebody posts a message to debian-user saying "hey, try
setting this flag in your XF86Config-4", and that flag causes the X
server to lock the PCI bus and the machine, and this machine happens to
be network router at the busiest backbone site on the planet, Debian
can't be sued for the traffic that failed to get routed while the
machine was locked up because some dumbass was doing host-based routing
at a major network site, using Linux to do it, running an X server on
that box, and playing around with his X configuration in a production
environment.

> "use or performance of [...] information"
> 
> Can we say "quality" instead? This sounds very odd to me.

Again, borrowed language.  The "performance" language is, I think, an
effort by copyright cartels to stretch the concept of "performance" into
all forms of use so that they can use copyright licenses to prevent you
from, say, reading a book.  <Adobe>("Ah, you may have BOUGHT a copy of
this electronic book, but we didn't grant you a license to PERFORM it!
And turning it on so you can read it is a PERFORMANCE!")</Adobe>

Please trash that part; I should have omitted it, and I don't want
Debian to appear that it's lending creedence to that bullshit
extrapolation of copyright law.

-- 
G. Branden Robinson                |    Build a fire for a man, and he'll
Debian GNU/Linux                   |    be warm for a day.  Set a man on
branden@debian.org                 |    fire, and he'll be warm for the
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |    rest of his life. - Terry Pratchett

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