Russell Nelson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Oh well. I guess if you were to talk to a lawyer you might get a > different opinion. I don't think I'm going to be able to convince > you. In some jurisdictions, yes, you don't need to form a contract to > disclaim warranty. In others, you do. You don't *need* to lock a > file before writing to it. It's just the smart thing to do if you > expect some other process to be writing to it at the same time. > Similarly, you don't *need* a contract to disclaim warranty -- > sometimes the warranty disclaimer alone is sufficient! And sometimes > you won't munge your file if you don't lock it! > > If you talk to a lawyer, he's going to advise you to 1) disclaim > warranty, and 2) form a contract.
Of course! A warranty disclaimer by contract is much stronger; in many jurisdictions a disclaimer by contract is valid whereas one not by contract is not. But since in general free software is not accompanied by a contract (the GPL, for example, is explicitly not a contract), we don't have available to us the "sign a contract" method. You said earlier that you *must* have a contract to disclaim, as if a non-contractual disclaimer is everywhere void. Now you recognize the truth, it seems, that a non-contractual disclaimer is, somewhere, sometimes, a useful thing. Since Free Software in general doesn't work by contract, we must take the best we can get, which is a non-contractual disclaimer. > In general, you can contract around warranty law. I agree completely--for *some* jurisdictions. For others, public policy has been deemed to be better served by warranties, and contracts to disclaim them have been found contrary to public policy. Thomas
