[License-discuss] Warranty of title

[Tim Makarios]

On Wed, 2017-01-18 at 08:01 +0000, David Woolley wrote:
> More generally on this topic, the requirement to include the copyright 
> and licence in the permissive licences is only really codifying best 
> practice.  That's especially true for open source derivatives, where the 
> implied warranty that the supplier has the right to issue the end user 
> licence, or even distribute the software, is being waived.

I don't think this can be waived under New Zealand law [1].  If you're
granting a licence in New Zealand, then I think you're legally
warranting that you have the authority to grant that licence [2].  But
I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.

Does anyone know whether many other jurisdictions similarly restrict
such waivers?  Has it ever caused a problem for distributors of what was
thought to be open-source software?  Or is there some legal theory by
which the copyright holders are considered to be the licensors, but the
distributor is considered to be the one to whom the waiver of warranty
applies?

Tim
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[1]
http://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/DLM1705815.html
[2]
http://legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1994/0143/latest/DLM346274.html