alt Hacker NewsThis gift comes with the following clauses listed plainly in the license file:
7. Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable law or
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WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or
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8. Limitation of Liability. In no event and under no legal theory,
whether in tort (including negligence), contract, or otherwise,
unless required by applicable law (such as deliberate and grossly
negligent acts) or agreed to in writing, shall any Contributor be
liable to You for damages, including any direct, indirect, special,
incidental, or consequential damages of any character arising as a
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Work (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill,
work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all
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has been advised of the possibility of such damages.Replies
I don't think anyone is looking for legal remedies, this is not the right layer.
There's a long literary tradition of representing contracts as a tool of villainy. Signing them is generally treated as a Faustian bargain.
This is a great example of why. Most humans have a sense, deep down, that contracts often exist to bridge the gulf between the ethically defensible and the legally defensible.
It's hard to imagine that any sane person who is just looking to use a popular editor would read some broad limitation of liability language like the above, and interpret it to mean, "By the way, we intend to quietly delete certain files created by a competing fork of this project whenever we find them."
It's true that contracts with liability limitation clauses like this are an absolute necessity in this day and age. But there's also a non-legal principle of mutual respect that is absolutely necessary to a healthy open source community.
I am never going to use any software you have written.
It's genuinely mind-blowing to me that software can do something obviously bad, someone can point it out, and then someone will link to the license file to say they have the right to do it.
That's such an obvious category mistake that I'm not sure how to respond. It almost feels like a bad-faith interpretation of Wichary's original point.