prohibiting use that would result in death or personal injury

[Derek J. Balling]

At 1:23 PM -0700 7/24/00, Brian Behlendorf wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Jul 2000, Justin Wells wrote:
>>  Refresher: what we're talking about is whether or not you can get away
>>  with "do not use this software for life-safety systems" in an opensource
>>  license (violating fields of endeavour) and if you don't disclaim
>>  that, are you open to unlimited liability.
>
>Are you sure in your jurisdiction that that applies to transactions
>without "consideration"?  E.g., I can buy that for the raft example you
>gave, but you're paying the rafting rental place; no one is paying the
>open source developer for that code (unless they've hired them to do
>so).  I do know that courts look much differently at contracts that are
>"without consideration" than those that are.  In fact, keeping this in the
>realm of copyright law and *not* contract law may be the clincher - do you
>have any evidence of someone writing a book on some subject, then being
>sued (successfully) when using the information in that book led to some
>unfortunate situation?  I think that's a closer comparison than the
>rafting example.

History Lesson: Did MTV win or lose the lawsuit about the kids who 
burned down their house after watching Beavis and Butthead playing 
with lighters?

I don't know the answer, but the lack of consideration would be 
roughly appropriate.

D