prohibiting use that would result in death or personal injury

[Nils Lohner]

In message <00072419245702.00153 at nomad>, David Johnson writes:
>On Mon, 24 Jul 2000, Derek J. Balling wrote:
>
>> I'm not, as a programmer working for nobody and for free, going to 
>> write code, allow it be used by some guy who's monitoring pacemakers 
>> or something, and then have someone hit me with some 
>> contributory-manslaughter charge because of negligent coding 
>> practice, "hoping" that the court will like my disclaimer.
>
....
>Open source software may actually be safer for its author than closed
>source, since open source means full discloser. Once a medical
>developer included open source code in his product, I am of the opinion
>that all responsibility for its use now falls on his shoulders. Again,
>IANAL.
>
  Sorry to jump in to this discussion so late, but I've seen a lot of 
general 'use at your own risk' clauses... couldn't those be 'fireproofed' so 
that they can be included along with the license to protect the author 
sufficiently?  Specifically mentioning not 'intending' software for nuclear 
labs etc. seems ridiculous to me: then you may as well start to say that you 
can't use a graphical display program to display a rope designed for 
climbing (for example) in case the default texture mapping makes it look 
more robust than it is (ok, I'm reaching here, but you get the point :) and 
it breaks...

So (first attempt): 
   "Any person using this software or including this software in another 
product does so entirely at their own risk.  The author makes no explicit or 
implied statement about its functionality or reliability."

Comments?  Improvements?  This would seem to address the issue discussed 
here in general as opposed to on a case by case basis.  If someone could 
flesh this out into a more legally sound statement (someone with a law 
degree, perhaps?) and then repost it that would be great.  Is there a 
central repository somewhere for licenses where this could be included?

Regards, Nils.