On Tue, Apr 11, 2006 at 12:41:24PM +0100, Ian Lynch wrote: > On Tue, 2006-04-11 at 12:02 +0100, Chris Croughton wrote: > > On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 06:49:11PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote: > > > > > I'm pretty sure, though, in the case where software is sold (or, a > > > software licence - I don't think the judiciary will care) it will need > > > to meet the usual standards (e.g., be fit for purpose). I don't think > > > those standards are terribly high though :/ > > > > It will? So can I please get my money back if I buy a shrink-wrapped > > software package which proves to be not fit for the purpose for which it > > was sold to me? Has anyone ever managed to get money back for such a > > claim from MS, for instance? > > Not that exact claim, but in California customers did for being charged > for software that they didn't want that was pre-installed on the > computer.
How about outside California? As I recall others who tried that in other places didn't get any refunds. > The issue with fit for purpose is that its subjective to a degree. You > could try a legal battle based on the fact that any operating system > with security holes is not fit for purpose but it would be expensive and > you have no certainty of winning. Such a judgement would also affect > GNU/Linux on the grounds that its not perfectly secure. Since nothing is 'perfectly' secure such a claim would be rightly thrown out. But for instance a C++ compiler which doesn't come close to the standard should be returnable regardless of what the shrink-wrap licence says (typically such things only cover damaged media, for instance). Or an HTML creating package which produces rubbish. Such a judgement would probably be limited to "what you paid for it", anyway, so returning GNU/Linux on the basis that it couldn't do what it was claimed to do would be limited to whatever the supplier charged (if it was an 'Enterprise' version as a boxed item, for instance). If it's pulled from the net then their would likely be no refund of download costs (if any), but if a distributor sold a boxed version which was broken then there should be. Chris C _______________________________________________ Fsfe-uk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/fsfe-uk
