Legacy? Re: For Approval: The MirOS Licence

[Lawrence Rosen]

Chuck Swiger conjectured:
> I believe Thorsten's concern is that in many European locales, you're
> not allowed to completely disclaim warranty, even if you give the
> software away for free.  The GPL modified their original "no warranty"
> clause to include phrases like "11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED
> FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY
> FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW."

If that is Thorsten's concern, then I suggest he not be concerned. In every
jurisdiction the law trumps the license if it wants to. In many
jurisdictions (but not often enough in mine), you're not allowed to give
dangerous crap to consumers no matter what your license says.

Nobody will avoid copyright or warranty jail by CAPITAL LETTERS.

/Larry



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chuck Swiger [mailto:chuck at codefab.com]
> Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 1:24 PM
> To: License Review
> Subject: Re: Legacy? Re: For Approval: The MirOS Licence
> 
> On Jul 10, 2008, at 1:12 PM, Matthew Flaschen wrote:
> > Thorsten Glaser wrote:
> >> But look at it from this POV: it's the equivalent of the MIT/BSD/ISC
> >> style licences for European developers. None of the existing licences
> >> in "copycenter" style (and only very few in "copyleft" style) meet
> >> our
> >> requirements. This is one of the reasons I apply again.
> >
> > You haven't given any convincing reasons the MIT license won't work
> > for European developers.  I understand you don't like capitalized
> > disclaimers, but they're no less valid than the uncapitalized
> > variant in Europe.  A license's job isn't to look pretty.  It's to /
> > license/.
> 
> I believe Thorsten's concern is that in many European locales, you're
> not allowed to completely disclaim warranty, even if you give the
> software away for free.  The GPL modified their original "no warranty"
> clause to include phrases like "11. BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED
> FREE OF CHARGE, THERE IS NO WARRANTY
> FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW."
> 
> I don't think the lack of such a phrase in the MIT/BSD/etc licenses
> are a great concern, but I can also understand why someone in some
> locales might want to have a license which corresponded better with
> the local legal requirements...
> 
> Regards,
> --
> -Chuck