Open Source Licenses

[Brendan de Bruijn]

All,
I am writing on behalf of a European telecomms research project I am working
on; we are looking at the use of Open Source software in a major telco's
environment. Regarding this I would like to request you for feedback on some
license-related topics. I apologise in advance if my queries seem to be
basic.
If anyone has the time, I would be very grateful if you could answer some of
my queries. I am slightly confused about the various types of licenses that
are accredited by OSI, especially as the GNU people explicitly discredit
some of these licenses on their website
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html. In the project, we are
trying to establish what the legal hurdles of Open Source Licenses are,
especially regarding liablility in the event of things 'breaking'. Is the
common 'Warranty' displayed at the end of a license enough to cover this?
Are there any examples that you know of where this issue has arisen?
We are also trying to figure out how one determines what the most
appropriate license in a certain situation is; for this reason I am trying
to compile a list of 'essential components' that need to be covered in a
license. So far I have come up with: 1.copying/redistribution, 2.
modification/redistribution and 3.warranty; would you say these are the
three main components that need to be covered in an 'Open Source' license'?
I would really appreciate any response to my queries.
Thanks in advance,
Brendan de Bruijn
Eurescom Project P1044