prohibiting use that would result in death or personal injury

[Seth David Schoen]

Justin Wells writes:

> Can an opensource license include this phrase:
> 
>    You must not use our software where there is any risk of death or 
>    personal injury. 
> 
> Lots of licenses say that, and the reason is that in many jurisdictions it
> is not possible to disclaim liability for something that might kill or 
> seriously inujure someone.
> 
> So what software licenses do instead is prohibit any use that might result 
> in death or personal injury.
> 
> I think this contradicts the "fields of endeavor" portion of the OSD. However,
> I also think it's an entirely reasonable thing to put in an open source 
> license.

It does contradict that clause, and ignoring that clause is a
problematic precedent.

Also, perhaps some organization which specializes in examining and
warranting and insuring software for life-safety applications would
some day want to take a look at some free software and approve it for
those situations.  (I can see some interesting economic problems here,
but this isn't the place for that.)

I've seen two approaches to the life-safety liability problem in
software licenses:

	This software is not for use (or, not to be used) for
	real-time or on-line control of nuclear, chemical,
	aviation, medical, or life-safety critical systems.

or

	This software is not designed or intended for use in
	real-time or on-line control of nuclear, chemical,
	aviation, medical, or life-safety critical systems.

(both approximate, and some add other language or warnings about
reliability or failure modes)

I think the latter approach is consistent with the OSD, and it
expresses the intentions of the software author more clearly.  I'm not
sure if the legal protection it provides would be as strong as the
former approach.

The OSD would definitely look more favorably on telling people that
you didn't mean for them to do things, as opposed to that you forbid
them to do those things.  Unfortunately, liability law in some
jurisdictions might well take the opposite view.

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>  | And do not say, I will study when I
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/  | have leisure; for perhaps you will
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF)  | not have leisure.  -- Pirke Avot 2:5