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▲ timschmidt 2 hours ago

This gift comes with the following clauses listed plainly in the license file:

   7. Disclaimer of Warranty. Unless required by applicable law or
      agreed to in writing, Licensor provides the Work (and each
      Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS,
      WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or
      implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions
      of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A
      PARTICULAR PURPOSE. You are solely responsible for determining the
      appropriateness of using or redistributing the Work and assume any
      risks associated with Your exercise of permissions under this License.

   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
      result of this License or out of the use or inability to use the
      Work (including but not limited to damages for loss of goodwill,
      work stoppage, computer failure or malfunction, or any and all
      other commercial damages or losses), even if such Contributor
      has been advised of the possibility of such damages.
▲InsideOutSanta 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

▲timschmidt 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Equally mindblowing that folks feel someone hacking on open source software has an obligation to do anything the way they feel it needs to be done when the whole point is that anyone gets to do more or less what they want with the code.

You can't have both.

▲retsibsi an hour ago | parent | next [-]

They get to do more or less what they want with the software, and others get to say more or less what they want about that. What's wrong with deciding they've crossed a line, being bothered by that, and warning others? Nobody's trying to get the law involved, or maliciously retaliate against them, or anything like that.

▲InsideOutSanta an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I published my comment for free, and yet you are criticizing it.

▲ryandrake 44 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think you are objecting to OP’s “duty of care” wording which could be interpreted as suggesting a legal obligation. Nobody in this thread is really arguing that open source developers have a legal obligation to do this and to not do that. We are just saying they should do this and should not do that.

▲Chris2048 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> has an obligation to do anything the way they feel it needs to be done

> anyone gets to do more or less what they want with the code

so if the software had explicitly installed a root kit, you'd say the same?

If you give out free soup, you get to poison it too?

▲nikanj an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

"My software ran rm -rf / but it's GPL so sucks to be you"

▲jstanley 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think anyone is looking for legal remedies, this is not the right layer.

▲timschmidt 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Is some part of:

"Licensor provides the Work (and each Contributor provides its Contributions) on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied, including, without limitation, any warranties or conditions of TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY, or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE."

Unclear? The fact that it's part of a license does not make it a legal-system-only warning.

The software might eat your dog, and feed your homework. Run it at your own risk, and be prepared to submit patches or fork it to make it behave the way one prefers.

▲jeremyjh 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Is the fact that we are not discussing legal remedies in this thread unclear?

▲_vertigo 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is one of the most exhausting (and frankly, exhausted) recurring arguments that comes up over and over again on HN.

Some bit of open source software does something bad or unwanted which causes people point out that it shouldn't do that bad thing. In this case, not even "the authors of this software should be held liable for the software doing the bad thing", just, "Hey, the right thing to do would be to update the software to not do the bad thing."

Why does this always lead a zillion people to come out of the woodwork to point at licenses and warnings or whatever? Like, yes, there's a warning. Your software having a warning doesn't mean people can't criticize you and your software for doing bad thing. Your software license does not give you immunity from criticism or from people saying you should change your software.

No, you don't have to change the software. Yes, other people are within their rights to fork the software themselves. But they can also point out that they told you that your software was doing the bad thing and you didn't fix it or change it, and that as a result they don't like you or your software or both — whatever. Nothing at all wrong with that.

▲timschmidt an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I actually think you framed it really well. No parties involved have any particular obligations to each other. Nor should there be expectations otherwise without support. It sucks to lose data, everyone knows that, and no one wants it. And identifying things which can be improved is important. I stop at expecting someone else to do something because I want them to. I might hope they would, and try to convince them.

▲jeltz an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Such a disclaimer does not even remove all legal liability, it just reduces it.

▲mikestew 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The software might eat your dog, and feed your homework

Sure, and when it does we can say “this piece of shit ate my dog, and the authors of the software have no concept of a duty of care to their users”. And no amount of “well, axually…” is going to make any difference. I have a hard believing someone is copy-pasting a license file in good faith in response.

▲timschmidt 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Most open source software is written by individuals who aren't paid for the effort, and are solving their own problems. Presuming that they feel an obligation to the folks who download and use their work for free seems... bold.

If my neighbor mows my lawn for free, I'm not going to complain about his workmanship. If I want the job done a particular way, the solution is to do it myself, or pay someone to do it the way I like.

▲leoc an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Suppose that you build a childrens' slide in your front garden. You put up a big sign saying "Consider using my slide! https://neovim.io/ Here are several wonderful things about it. It's free for everyone!" in your yard. Underneath in smaller letters you add "[No liability]". You also put up noticeboard ads for your free kids' slide in neighbourhood shopping malls https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/neovim https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Neovim . Unfortunately, when you built the slide, you left sharp metal edges and corners sticking far up on the inside, reaching into the path of the user. No reasonably competent and diligent metalworker or slide-maker would have failed to notice these major flaws or failed to understand the serious danger they represented. Several neighbourhood children use the slide and receive serious gashes to the legs, arms or face, and have to go to the hospital. Even assuming that your no-liability small print somehow had you free and clear legally, do you believe that your behaviour would have been ethically and morally above all criticism? Do you think that "should have read the small print!" or "can't I build what I like in my own front yard?!" would have you covered? Do you think that your family and friends would agree?

▲retsibsi an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If my neighbor mows my lawn for free, I'm not going to complain about his workmanship. If I want the job done a particular way, the solution is to do it myself, or pay someone to do it the way I like.

I think this is a decent analogy, but it works better the other way. If my neighbour offers to mow my lawn, I accept, and then he destroys the flower bed adjacent to the lawn, I will be upset, and I will have every right to complain about what he did. If he reacts by blithely dismissing my concern, then I certainly have the right (and arguably the obligation) to warn others that they should think twice about accepting his offers of gardening assistance.

Some expectations reasonably go without saying; "don't destroy my flower bed when mowing my lawn" is one, and IMO "don't destroy my data without a clear warning and a chance to back out" is another, though of course we might disagree about exactly where this does and doesn't apply.

▲rdiddly an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If my neighbor mows my lawn for free, and in the process mows my flower garden down, things change a bit though don't they. That is a closer analogy. In that case I am going to complain, and maybe also tell everybody he's careless and not to let him near their lawns.

▲tikhonj 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If my neighbor mows my lawn and ruins my whole garden, I'd definitely complain. (And if I were in the neighbor's shoes, I'd feel awful about it and try to fix things.)

▲bunderbunder 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

▲timschmidt an hour ago | parent [-]

> 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."

Forks of projects trodding all over each others files is one of the more common problems that has happened, historically. Prior to the major efforts around freedesktop.org around configuration standardization, it was quite common. It'd be one of the first things I looked for when switching to a fork.

▲bunderbunder an hour ago | parent [-]

I’m not saying it doesn’t happen. I’m saying it shouldn’t be defended as good. It’s a defect. And in this particular incarnation it’s a defect that directly clashes with fundamental Free Software principles such as personal digital sovereignty.

I also suspect that few people actually believe it’s ok and these legalistic defenses are more about circling the wagons. How many people would defend Microsoft if a new Office version automatically and quietly stripped edit history from documents that were originally created by other versions? Would we be hunting for limited liability clauses in their EULA to defend the design decision?

▲timschmidt 23 minutes ago | parent [-]

> I’m saying it shouldn’t be defended as good.

Thankfully, that's not a thing I ever did.

> I also suspect that few people actually believe it’s ok and these legalistic defenses are more about circling the wagons.

For me it's more about healthy boundaries and expectations. If I'm somehow paying for a project's development, I have higher expectations. If I'm not, I understand that I've chosen the dev/test track and there will be bugs and issues. The developer may choose to run off in an odd direction coughGnome3cough and my only recourse is to fork or hope someone else does. Disagreements as to how things should work happen pretty often.

I'm not defending anything or anyone. Just describing the system as it exists.

▲jeremyjh 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I am never going to use any software you have written.