prohibiting use that would result in death or personal injury

[David Johnson]

On Wed, 26 Jul 2000, Nils Lohner wrote:

>  Specifically mentioning not 'intending' software for nuclear 
> labs etc. seems ridiculous to me

Let's say a bit of open source software get included in a nuclear
reactor control program, and that reactor had a major accident as a
direct or indirect result of the open source software. Further, let's
say that hordes of lawyers and their damaged clients launch one of the
largest liability lawsuits in human history.

Who is going to be targeted? Everyone! Including the poor schmoe that
paved the reactor facility's parking lot. No disclaimer will keep you
out of court. Sad but true.

But what happens during the trial? Even though the lawyers sued
everyone and their grandmothers, they do not expect a ruling against
all of them. A) It's far easier to focus attention on the reactor
company and the contractors who actually built it. B) Unless the
developer were in the business of writing reactor control software, or
directly sold the software to the company, there will be no evidence of
liability. In all likelihood, someone from the company downloaded the
software off of a website. Even if there were a glaringly obvious
uninitialized pointer, the evidence is large that the company
developers saw it (the source code is right there). They saw every nook
and cranny of the code and they still chose to use it.

The odds of actually getting sued for loss of life because of your
open source software are extremely remote, in my opinion. Losing such a
case is even slimmer. Because the source code is wide open and you are
not selling the software, you are very safe.

If you are selling the software, on the other hand, get liability
insurance. That's just common sense.

The safest thing to do is to not write the software to begin with. At
some point, the additional work to further reduce a risk  outweighs
the benefits. At that point you stop and go on to other things.

> 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."

Why not just cut at paste one of the disclaimers from an established
license? The BSD license has a disclaimer that says much the same
thing, but has been pored over by hordes of lawyers for a couple of
decades.

-- 
David Johnson
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