| ▲ | Ask HN: SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED WITHOUT WARRANTY – does this do anything? | |
| 3 points by fkdk a day ago | 6 comments | ||
License texts are copied billions of times every day. In most cases, accompanying software by unpaid open source developers. - Are there cases where such a person has been sued due to some warranty-related aspect? - Could you be sued if you forget to add a license? - Is the entire section pointless? | ||
| ▲ | shoo 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | |
A related concept is liability. Suppose you're a service provider - a contractor who performs maintenance services. You sign a contract with your client, BigCo, where you will service their plant's fancy $1m machine every month, and in return they pay you a modest $500 per month. One month you make a mistake in your work which causes their machine to become defective, but you & they don't notice in time before the defective machine creates a large mess. The defective machine causes BigCo to lose $3m due to lost revenue while the machine is offline & their costs to replace the machine. There's a pretty good chance BigCo may be able to sue you for the $3m losses they suffered from your mistake, even though this is disproportionately higher than the value of your $500 / monthly fee. As the contractor you avoid or limit this by making sure there is language in the contract to limit your liability & maybe arranging an insurance policy. Now, how do things change if you sell a software product instead of a service? & how do things change if you give that software product away for free, instead of selling it? There's still a chance that some user of your free open source software product suffers real harm because of it. Particularly if they're using your free software in a commercial context with a lot of scale, perhaps they've suffered millions of dollars of losses because your free software product was defective. Are you liable to compensate them for their damages? Maybe! | ||
| ▲ | Dragbat 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
Basically, it means that the developer does not guarantee that the software works, because in some countries or jurisdictions (like the US) it is assumed that the developer provides a "warranty" that the software works unless the developer explicitly says otherwise. So basically, it's like saying "you can't sue me if my software has bugs" | ||
| ▲ | bluGill a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
What county! The USA has complex warranty laws and that text has specific meaning and limits what it allows them to not warranty. Other counties have different laws. See a lawyer | ||
| ▲ | giantg2 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
Your best bet is to look up case law of a specific license type in your jurisdiction. If you're using GPLv3 or something common like that, then you should be able to GoogleFu plenty of case law on in. | ||
| ▲ | brudgers a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | |
If it matters, hire an attorney. If it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. | ||
| ▲ | jqpabc123 a day ago | parent | prev [-] | |