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What's (Still) Wrong With UCITA
Grant Gross has an article at NewsForge outlining both changes being proposed by the The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws to its version of UCITA (a model intended for adoption by the various state legislatures), and objections raised to the resulting language by Red Hat lawyer Carol Kunze. Among other things, Kunze points out that Free software projects could be effectively discouraged from releasing software if software producers are required to provide warranties -- imagine trying to provide warranties on all the packages available to Debian users, for instance, or every bit of software included with Mandrake Linux.
How can you provide a warranty against bugs when you have teenagers from all over the world making random changes to your codebase on Sourceforge?
> required to provide warranties
Free projects should just copy Microsoft's license which, by the time it is done excluding things, provides nothing to the end user.
Everyone else on the planet are responsible for their products and services. The software industry is just spoiled.
And about the issue about open source, CHARGE. It IS free as in speech and not beer after all so make sure you charge enough for taking your responsibility.
Among other things, Kunze points out that Free software projects could be effectively discouraged from releasing software if software producers are required to provide warranties -- imagine trying to provide warranties on all the packages available to Debian users, for instance, or every bit of software included with Mandrake Linux.
You want Microsoft to be held financially liable for bugs, yet Free Software should have no warranty if something blows up in the field? Or is this another "Tough Crap...no one made you use free software" instance.
Sounds like the kettle calling the pot black if you ask me...
AFAIK, most software is without warranty. Even windows. Nobody provides warranties. If this comes into force, it will basically kill the software industry, wether open-source or closed source.
Software can never be without problems.
Just imagine half the population putting lawsuits! Law will have to be outsourced mebbe!
My Aurora : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o91ZsGwJYyg
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Presumably, all their code is audited by the RedHat developers. A lot of it has been rigourously tested by their existing customers. This testing demonstrates that (as long as they use the Redhat binaries) the system should be stable. The probability of expensive failure can be estimated, and factored into the calculations.
If someone does discover a fatal flaw, then either Redhat or the vendor should be ultimately liable for it since they are the ones making money from the transaction.
I don't agree with the argument in the article that commercially-packaged Free Software being sold alongside other commercial software should have to abide by the same warranty obligation of commercial software (which is essentially worthless at the 90-day limit EULAs set, but that's beside the point.) Actually, this type of restriction would seem to put a damper on massive bundling of free/cheap software as well as game companies dumping old games in the bargain bins, as warranty obligations can get pretty expensive. This could use a bit of rethinking.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Couldn't agree more. It is only this industry that get away with it, no one else does.
We in the Free Software community just love to berate the Federal Government for giving in to corporations and lobbyists. We tend to draw a distinct line between what benefits big firms like the RIAA or MPAA and what is morally correct. When the government bows to industry pressure, as in the passage of the DMCA, it is rightly considered a tragedy. We, the consumers, bear the cost in these cases.
So what is the lesson? That we should not allow pragmatic arguments from profit-minded companies to dictate legislation. Such is, unfortunately, the case here. Yes, Red Hat is a "good" company. It has supported Linux and Open Source and contributed to the community as a whole. But when it argues that it could sell more software without the requirements put forth in UCITA, well, we have to call a spade a spade and recognize that, hey, that's just Red Hat looking out for Red Hat. We need to take a step back and see that argument for what it is: an appeal to government for the kind of corporate welfare we Free Software folks usually disdain. Or once again, we, the consumers, shall bear the cost.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Software should come with enforceable warranties. It sucks as it is that software makers disclaim all warranties including the expectation that the software work at all.
Those that support and/or put together open source software need to grow up and realize that there's the exectation that their shit works, and an exectation of fitness of a product isn't that much to ask.
Welcome to the real world ladies and gentlemen! This isn't your mommies house, and this isn't a college dorm. Welcome to responsibility!
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Forget trying to warrenty packages that come with Debian or Mandrake, but think about Suse! There's a nightmare on a new level.
Perhaps this could work in our favor;
:)
By the time you have read this warrenty, or installed the product, your warrenty is null and void. You could call us, but we won't pick up the phone.
It's almost as good as Microsoft's
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Amend the UCITA so that all software sold is required either:
- to provide a warranty, or
- to provide full open access to the source code so the user may modify it as they see fit.
completely at the pleasure of the software author or vendor."Provided by the management for your protection."
Maybe requiring to have a warranty *option* *available* would be more feasible. Vendors
could sell (or give away) unwarrantied versions,
and sell warrantied versions, for consumers that
demanded them. The price difference would be up to the vendor.
I believe something like this could be useful, if and only if, OpenSource and Freeware-like software is exempt. How can someone make a reasonable claim to damages if they got the item for free? If they paid for it, then there obviously is a responsability by the manufacturer to make said product as reliable as possible. Maybe its just me, but doesn't something like holding a free product's manufacturer go against common-sense? Would everyone prefer to buy all of their code, even though there still isn't any true security? Just because you pay for a product doesn't mean it will be free of flaws/bugs. Firestone can attest to that! Its sad that one day Linux may need a disclaimer reading "Use at your own risk!"
The biggest benefit that I can think of from something like the propossed legislation would be (possibly) the end of security through obscurity and bugs being passed off as features.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
...in particular:
"And software distributed for free would still be required under UCITA to carry a warranty if there's a charge for installation services or an accompanying maintenance contract."
You take money to install/maintain it, you provide a warrantee. I like the sound of that; otherwise you could be any old chump just taking peoples money.
Note also that:
"the new UCITA would exempt from warranty an Open Source product that was sold for the cost of the media it was on, such as a $3 Linux CD set."
Which again makes perfect sense. Where it gets hazy is when 'free' software is sold for a cost above media but obviously below the amount required for maintenance; this will be a tough thing to iron out.
I don't know ANY software which doesn't have at least one bug.
Some have more then others, but none have no bugs.
As a consultant, I could be prosecuted if they ever find a bug?!?
While I always do a lot of testing of what I will release, clients are pushing for things to come out fast, and even when you give them realistic preview of the time it will take, they cut it in half.
So there is always some little bugs hidden somewhere which will come out.
If there is a possibility to go back after the original coders/company, clients will do so.
IMHO, this will just be another law to be abused...
I'd rather be sailing...
> And software distributed for free would still
> be required under UCITA to carry a warranty if
> there's a charge for installation services or
> an accompanying maintenance contract.
That seems pretty reasonable. If I agree to install open source software to do X and charge you for it and the software doesn't do X I'm in breach.
That doesn't effect open source it effects pay distributions which makes claims. The article says as much, "One is an acknowledgment that a notice license -- such as the GPL or BSD licenses -- is not governed by UCITA, as opposed to contractual licenses".
In any case the worse that UCITA has ever had is "Implied warranty of merchantability. An implied obligation that a computer program will be fit for the ordinary purposes for which it is used. UCITA makes this warranty applicable to all computer programs, thus expanding the scope to software currently governed by common law which does not have this warranty." This is a clarification of the law. For example if SAMBA releases a beta version it wouldn't be covered because beta software's common use is to help find bugs and allow for layored developement in the future release version. If SAMBA released a release version for free it wouldn't be covered. If RedHat said on their box "the new SAMBA 3 will allow you to add a Linux box to a Windows 2000 domain" then SAMBA 3 as shipped by RedHat would need to provide that functionality. If RedHat is bothering to check out SAMBA 3 then they can't make claims about its functionality when the sell the distribution instead they can say, "The package includes a functional version of Samba 3, the Samba 3 group claims this allow you to add a Linux box to a Windows 2000 domain" which is probably a more accurete description of their state of knowledge at the time the distribution is released. The net effect of this is that paid distributions can't engage in false advertising. I don't know any that really do though some are a bit careless in their language. This may be a good thing for Open Source as it will require distributions to clearly describe what they do and what they don't do.
Are these guys serious? How many years has the software industry been operating? How many times have consumers purchased shotty software only to discover the software EULA basically gave the manufacturer all power.
:-)
Microsoft would be bankrupt within the year if this was required. Personally I would be harrasing them every other week due to defective software. I MUST have my video gaming addiction filled regularly!
Linux and BSD. Now those are platforms for real work
Has Comcast disconnected your Internet account? Same here. You can read about it at http://comcastissue.blogspot.com
If this product fails to Blue Screen 5 times in the first 30 days, send your effective copy of Windows 2000 to us for a replacement defective one.
If the limit of one's *LIABILITY* under the warranty was the cost
of the software license - then we'd be OK.
* OpenSource Software authors charge $0 for their code,
so their liability is $0. There is a warranty - but it's
practical impact is zero.
* RedHat et al charge for the cost of putting free software
onto physical media - but the software is still free so
long as it can still be freely redistributed. So their
liability is only for the non-free parts of their distro.
That's also fine by me - it gives them an incentive to
keep their distro's squeaky-clean and freely distributable.
* Microsoft suffer horribly because whenever WORD crashes,
I can demand to be refunded the entire cost of the package.
They'd go bust *very* quickly - which is fine by me!
* Large software companies that produce reasonably reliable
code and charge reasonable amounts of money for it are
under great incentive to write code that (whilst it may
not be 100% bug-free) is sufficiently reliable that they
won't get significant numbers of warranty returns.
Good!
If the limit of liability is the cost of the *damage* done by
bad software then it's not just the OpenSource world that'll
be out of business - it would be hard to imagine *ANY* generic
software such as operating systems, compilers, word processors
surviving the barrage of law suits that would immediately result.
Bring it on I say!
www.sjbaker.org
Idemnify authors of public domain information against civil legal threat arising from the work itself or derivative works.
That's why the UCB, MIT, and CMU Licenses exist in the first place, rather than the code being placed in the public domain.
If you want to control your code after the fact, fine: accept the liablity associated with doing that, as your cost for the payment of being granted that control. The sole reason most University developed code in these cases is not in the public domain is that a license was required to obtainlegal indemnification.
I don't think this would keep people from releasing under the (L)GPL or Artistic License or MPL, or SCSL, etc., if they felt the control they got by affixing the license was worth the cost.
-- Terry
The UCITA makes sense to me, it's perfectly normal for anything to be warranted. The big problem however would be the organization of free software projects. If my open source email client wipes my harddisk, exactly who am I going to turn to for my warranty? With companies like RedHat I can understand, but what about those thousands of open source projects which are no more than a loose colaboration of numbers of individuals? As long as there's no central entity to put my claims, what expect the designers of the UCITA me to do?
No one wants to be responsible for anything anymore. That is why we have so many lawyers running around suing people. When something goes wrong someone has to be responsible. It could be the person himself who got in trouble or someone else, yet no one will ever take the responsibility upon themselves.
Slashdotters complain about lawyers suing for this and that all the time, yet they don't want to be responsible for the software they write. Write good software and provide a warranty, or else you are just promoting the lack of responsible ethics this country has.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Computers are maturing. We will have to adapt and write better code, with warranties. It's a fact that no one can escape. People want their computers to run just as good as their car - it turns on and runs when you want it to. It will run perfectly for a limited time, and most often longer than that, with a warranty in case something goes wrong.
The car example is as close as comparing apples and oranges, because no one gives away cars at no cost to themselves. It is as close an example as most laymen will understand, though.
The debate needs to outline the problems, define solutions, and find ways to implement them. Defining the problems is still underway, and not an easy task. Defining solutions will require more debate, bickering and infighting. Implementing the solutions will be pulling teeth.
Is it necessary? If we want the computer industry to continue to mature according to old business rules.
What step should be made with this, start bickering and continue to outline the problems.
how about a money back gaurentee?
but it will cost a lot more...
Take cars for example, it's possible for a big company like GM to create a new car in a couple of weeks. But they have to give a warranty on it, and they have to make certain that the car is safe. So they spend months and months of testing the car in every immaginable way. They have to be sure that the car will be free from serious defects for at least the lenght of the warranty, but more than that for the safety (or they'll have costly recalls!).
You can do the same with software, where I work the testing time is often 3 to 4 times longer than the time it took to develop the program. So you have projects that took 1 month to make but 3 months to test. That's expensive but a bug in calculating interests for example can be a lot more expensive than that if you discover it a couple of years later!
Try it! Library of Babel
When you buy most open source software, what you're actually paying for is the packaging, documentation and distribution of same. You can guarantee this: If the shrink wrap is not broken, the CDs inside are guaranteed to be unbroken and free from scratches. The books inside are guaranteed to not be dog eared.
Other, custom open source software already has a kind of warranty- the contractor is writing it for you. If it doesn't work, he isn't finished yet.
It's easy to guarantee installation. It's installed properly, right? The maintainance contract is in itself a form of warranty.
None of these are ways of weaseling out of ethical obligations. They reflect the realistic expectations of just about everybody involved in computers and open source. Free software isn't a product to be sold, so it in and of itself can not have a real warranty. The things actually sold can realistically be guaranteed. If the stupid politicians want to force geeks to expose themselves to financial liability, then the geeks just have to expose themselves to the same liability that MS has always done: none. Including the source code can be its own insurance. A lot of "liability" can be shifted if the customer has it.
Basically this is a layer of overhead that proprietary guys already have (without adding to their responsibilities) and now they want to saddle open source folks with the expense and distraction while adding to their FUD. Easy to get around, easy to overcome.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
If lawyers are suing fast food chains for cauing obesity health problems, it is only a matter of time before they latch onto the software industry. MicroSoft has $38 billion in cash tempting them.
Easy. Let the warranty state that if the users are not satisfied with the free software product, they will get their money back.
My opinion? See above.
I thought uniform state laws were called Federal laws? Why are there people trying to make state laws the same in all states? Kinda defeats the point of having individual states in a union all togeather.
At first I thought that nobody would win with software warranties, but then I realized that Microsoft would. They could weather the legal storm, whereas Linux couldn't.
In reality though, there could be no warranty. It would be so jam-packed with disclaimers it would basically be useless. Bumper to bumper warranty my ass - read the fine print.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
W00T! :-)
Hey, the following should be a required clause in the Viral and Immutable Gnu Public Warranty: "If you're not completely satisfied, the supplier of this software will refund your full purchase price!" It's just one more way RMS & Co can keep people from charging $$$ for GPL software!
only commercial products should have to privde warranties. not the individual opensource projects who give their code away for free. and if you ask why? because commercial products usually make profits and usually customers get fushnickered in the face of them.
Guaranteed to take up disk space!
We simply need to add a new clause to the GPL whereby we disclaim all warranties and in such jurisdictions where this is prohibited we disallow usage of said software.
Or...
We stop providing binaries and make the user/VAR who bundles them responsible for the warranties. This way either the user themself is responsible or the VAR can conduct compatability testing with their distro.
"As flies to the wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for sport." - William Shakespeare, King Lear
Hang on a mo, I thought OS stuff wasn't sold, it was really its delivery and packaging that was sold.
You could warrant the CD, that the stuff comes on, but the s/w is free and unwarranted.
How can you require a warranty on stuff that someone produced (theoretically, just for the hell of it) just because some people attempt to use it?
Next they'll require a warranty on our crap just in case people using it as compost find it lacking...
You are just paying for the media and support. Redhat doesn't make all the software, they just package it.
The solution to this is trivial. If you don't pay for software, you aren't required to be given any warranty. Fair enough? Then free software released to the public and not paid for is under no obligation to provide a warranty.
In the case of RedHat or other vendors of Linux software, they would, of course be responsible for providing a warranty on the software they include in their package. Any liability related to that software being solely born by RedHat, who's making the money, not the original developers/maintainers of the software.
Is this really that hard or unintuitive?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I agree with RedHat, here is my reasoning.
One of the major warranty problems I see in commercial software is the lack of a requirement for a commercial software vendor to fix bugs that impact the customer. With Open Source software, the customer has the ability to fix the problem on their own. (Either themselves, or through contractors.) That is the major difference. Another question, is who really owns GPL'd software? Is it Mr. Public Domain? Ok, let all get together an sue Mr. Public. In Open Source, the customer actually takes over more ownership of the software than in most commercial licenses. Don't believe me? Try to distribute MS Office in mass quantities and see what happens. Then look at Mandrake, a RedHat "core" user.
The rules are different. The end user product is different. It is like leasing a car which must be fixed at a certain dealer vs. buying a car you can take to any mechanic.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
"[...]imagine trying to provide warranties on all the packages available to Debian users, for instance, or every bit of software included with Mandrake Linux."
;)
Better distros?
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Despite this, there are still millions of people who drive BMWs, and Windows.
The big difference in this analogy is that BMWs have a long-time established reputation of delivering superlative reliability and useful service life without having to repurchase the whole vehicle every two years.
Too many people are taking this overboard, of course if your software is FREE you wouldn't have to provide a warranty. Even if the law was passed the first court case where someone was sued for not providing a warranty for their FREE software would become the example case and virtually make and exception to the law. Don't trifle with the trivial.
The provision allowing reverse engineering mirrors the European approach by making legitimate reverse engineering only for the purposes of making an interoperating program. The European Union copyright directive specifically disallows using reverse engineering for making competing programs.
But in the US, court decisions have allowed reverse engineering for the purpose of creating competing programs. UCITA probably can't remove this possibility, but it can force unnecessary litigation just to vindicate the right to reverse engineer.
I see this as a prime example of RedHat and others to live up to their promises. I see it like this, a warranty doesn't specifically have to guarruntee perfect software, in fact, that would be impossible. What the warrantee would provide is a promise to repair problems that may occur. This means that RedHat would need to employ developers to fix bugs in Open Source programs if a bug arises. I see this as being a good thing. After all, imaging the progress that would be made on KDE or Gnome if bugs actually got fixed when they're discovered. In fact, they would legally have to be fixed in order to meet the demands of the law.
I think this would be a great way to get companies like RedHat to make Open Source work on the desktop. There is promise to this model. In fact, although I generally fix all the bugs in Open Source which annoy me, there are sometimes problems which I simply don't have time to fix. It would be great if I knew that I could count on RedHat or another company to fix them when I submit a bug.
Think about that!
Does anybody expect that group to write any thing but a set of rules that favores their profession -- ie, the more litigation the better?
these issues have to be looked at, but technical people, and business people -- not just 300 ambulance chasers -- need to be involved.
deserve's got nothing to do with it...
Closed source (mystery contents in the binary executables) and vendor must cover the software with an extensive warranty. Vendor can weasel out of providing a warranty not only is sourcecode is open, but must also include a copy of the sourcecode on media with the product plus a copy of the development environment and clear instructions on how to build the product from source..... only then might I *think* about considering the UCITA.
I understand that the UCITA works only in the US, so does it cover me if (a) I buy software from directly from a website for instance that is base din the USA and I'm in Europe. Or (b) the other way round, me being inthe USA buys software froma website based in Europe? Or does it depend on where I regsiter the software? Or what?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
This person's comment is well-reasoned, and well-stated. There is no reason that this comment should have been modded-down. His first paragraph is a bit argumentative, but the second one is much better and should easily be worth more then the first.
Just because you don't argee with him, doesn't mean you should mod him down.
Obviously if you are able to compile your own code and it blows up then you are responsible. If, however, I have to look at a warranty for a Microsoft solution and one that has been more thoroughly tested and implemented in say Red Hat's version of Linux, then hands down I'll take the Red Hat version. Having to supply a warranty and therefore taking some liability is Microsoft's worse nightmare. Could you imagine being held financially liable for all the failures of IIS (nimda's, Iloveyous and so on)
Its worth noting that in other jurisdictions an "implied warranty of merchantability", to use the phrase common in the USA, cannot be disclaimed. IMHO this is probably one of the reasons that software companies are so reluctant to admit to selling you a product rather than licensing you to use it. If, for example, in the UK they were to sell you a piece of software rather than a license to use it then the sale of goods act would require that it was "of merchantable quality". Selling you a license seems to apply that standard to the license not to the software itself and guess what - "you're allowed to use it, therefore the license we sold you has performed exactly the function we sold it for..."
Maybe the law should require that when puchasing a software license that exchanges a one-time fee for a non-expiring license then that transaction must be treated as a de facto sale of this copy of the software. Instant applicability of implied warranties and, as a side note, also strengthening the applicability of the first sale doctrine and making sure that an EULA cannot limit a customers rights any more severely than in any other sale.
Of course, if that were ever to happen then commercial software users would really be in trouble. The software companies would sell nothing but subscriptions, licenses would last a year at most (assuming the loophole of "not a non-expiring license - it expires in 99 years" is plugged) and every piece of commercial software would contain timebombs.
Unfortunately, for so long as people want what they are selling badly enough the software giants hope to get away with providing it on any terms they want. THAT is why they are so scared of open source and/or free software. Even if we admit the questionable argument that commercially produced software is supposedly "higher quality" (dont see it myself but...) we are already at the stage where mainstream users are finding their relationship with the software companies almost as inconvenient as coping with the supposed shortfalls of open source alternatives. Add just that little bit of extra hassle (like recurring fees, time-limited installations etc...) and the balance could easily tip.
I had a
This is all fine and dandy by me, PROVIDED that the warranty is null and void if you haven't updated the software to the latest version. Onus for that should be entirely on the head of the end user. Then I guess there should be some reasonable period of time where updates are free, so somebody can't release a $10 updated once a week, and claim that your warranty is hosed if you don't pay it. Other than that, I can see this working out.
do not read this line twice.
In other words, the Red Hat's of this world would have to check that distro they're selling at $50 a pop or whatever actually contains working programs.
Debian, on the other hand, who sell nothing would not be forced to provide a warranty. Neither would I, if I just started up my trifling little open-source project and gave the results away for free. Neither would kernel.org, because they give their results away for free as well.
Interestingly, Red Hat wouldn't have to provide a warranty to me either, since I just download the ISOs. They haven't sold me anything.
Sounds eminently reasonable to me. If I pay for something, I want to know it works. If I'm just aquiring stuff for free, I have no right to demand a warranty from anyone.
Cheers,
Ian
I don't know about that. Lots of software I use doesn't have any bugs. Little simple programs meant to do one thing, and to do it well. Give the program some bad data and yeah it'll crash, but thats not a 'bug', that's a dumb user. There is a difference.
It's quite simple...if its free, you have no right to gripe. If you had to pay money for it, then the software producer should have to stand behind it and provide warranty, support, etc. As it stands now, commercial companies trash your rights when you click "I Agree"
//m
No user can reasonably evaluate binaries for suitability [they'll have more than enough trouble with `c`, but at least could do it]. Yet no coder can predict all the crazy cases that users will run. There has to be some shared work.
Warranty that the source is readable or some such nonsense.
Make only source distributions.
Or, just give them the money back if they aren't satisfied with the product. Sounds reasonable to me.
Hello... Is anyone in there... Do any of you have a fucking clue? Warranties only outline your rememdies. They say that the product will work, and if it doesn't, what you will do to fix it. If you aren't prepared to do anything but fix it, and send them new source or binary, who cares. You can't refund something they didn't spend, and if they spent money, they should get a refund if it doesn't meet their expectations.
Now, if a GARUNTEE was required, then you MIGHT have something to worry about. They just might get some source code that wasn't readable.
Sheesh, and you complain about legislatures not having a clue. The only people that have to worry about this are people that charge for software.
Why everyone opposes this?
If you buy a microwave and it doesn't work, you will return it to the seller and get a new one which works. Why can't same apply to the commercial software?
Games are a good example: big part of new games are so buggy that you can't even finish them. With warranty you could return a game and get your money back if there isn't fix. This way companies would get money AFTER making a decent product, not before.
If fix exist then manufacturer should provide it to you on CD. You shouldn't be forced to spend you time and money downloading 50MB patch on slow modem for software that you've already purchased.
Above mentioned things apply to every other industry, why software industry should get different treatment?
I know you were being cynical, but the problem with software warranties is that if a person is running mission critical software I wrote, and another web browser at the same time, and the web browser is ill behaved, causing my mission critical software to crash, then I am going to get sued. Not to mention that if the software requires any sort of administration, you can't be sure the administrator is competant.
So even if I wanted to be responsible for my software, I am not willing to be responsible for your administration.
And no, I don't want MS to be fiscally responsible for bugs. I want them to quit charging me for bug fixes. I don't want to upgrade a shoddy piece of software to a newer, still shoddy, piece of software for the low low price of $180.
Bugs happen in software. Bugs happen for a lot of reasons, whether it be DLL hell, or hardware incompatabilities, or just plain shitty software. If MS gets sued, then so should RMS, or Linus. I don't think anyone should get sued, but if one person does, than all of them should.
I wonder why any proposition of holding programmer/publisher liable for his product does not contain phrase like:
``Author/publisher of software may be held liable for his work up to total net revenue gathered from distribution of his software''.
Effectively, ``you get what you paid for''.
As it stands now each and every law to regulate liability of sofware author/publisher looks just like another tool to destroy Free Software -- no Free Software author can afford paying for losses to user that never paid him single penny.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
"and objections raised to the resulting language by Red Hat lawyer Carol Kunze. Among other things, Kunze points out that Free software projects could be effectively discouraged from releasing software if software producers are required to provide warranties -- imagine trying to provide warranties on all the packages available to Debian users, for instance, or every bit of software included with Mandrake Linux."
/. geeks idea of reasonable) support your product then you should not be in business.
This is the cost of doing business. It sounds like RedHat just wants a "free-ride" without all the problems of competing in a free market. I think it would be a far greater travesty to allow legislation to seperate OSS/Free Software from proproetary software solution providers. Business is business and if you can't provide and reasonably (based on a legal definition fo reasonable, not some
I think the responsibility for software should be just like the common law responsibility for loaning or borrowing things.
I forgot the terms, but if you loan somebody something for
their benefit, they are held to a high level of accountability.
If it is for both your benefit, they are held to a mid level
responsibility. If it for your benefit that they are borrowing
it or you are loaning it to them, they are held to a low level
of responsibility.
If i loan you my car because yours is out and you really need
to drive to work, you are very responsible for everything.
If i loan you my car because you want to drive it and i'm
thinking about selling it to you, they are mid - responsible.
If i loan you my car because its halloween and cars at my
house always get egged, then you are minimally responsible.
It makes sense.
But sort of seriously, the UCITA should just be made to
apply to Microsoft because they are the real reason for
the need for it anyway. It ought to just apply to them.
If it's an expression, then it's protected by Free Speech guarantees, and is copyrightable. And the concept of warranty doesn't make sense.
If it's a machine, then liability and rental contracts make sense, but speech protection and copyright don't.
When someone speaks an imperative command, you may decide to obey it. But when you do, the expression didn't magically just transform into a machine. You are the machine. Don't ever forget that. "Below every tangled hierarchy lies an inviolate level" -- Douglas Hofstadter.
Keep the warranty and liability discussion limited to machines. It's the user's decision, what commands that machine obeys. If you don't want the risk, then don't run the software. And don't call me an elitist snob for saying that people should be responsible for their computers. Yeah, it's a hard responsibility to take. So what? Why should difficulty somehow get you off the hook?
Medicine is a difficult topic to master as well, and those who have and given the title "Doctor." But that difficulty doesn't mean that people aren't responsible for their own health. Oh wait, that's exactly what some people are saying... What a price, indeed.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Dont shit me!!!
What I have read really make sense on laws people who wants to profit must give warranties. YES!!!
People who dont want to profit must do nothing more. YES!!!
You can reverse engineering if you want a píece of software to work with another. YES!!!
People wont contribute anymore to free software because of the changes!!, HAHAHAHA. I wasnt born yesterday.
YOU LIER want to change something positive and want to say to everybody that is negative.
Have to give stronger arguments, otherwise I think you are someone covering yourself like a freesoftware guy when what you really want is to profit from it, like many others these days.
gnome,jpg,gif LIERS all
Red Hat is arguing against the UCITA, not for it. The UCITA, in case for forget, put legal muscle behind unenforceables such as MS-EULA's saying you give full control of your hardware to microsoft.
The UCITA is heavily ANTI-consumer, and PRO-corporate. It will not benefit consumers, it will injure them. If you recall, RedHat doesnt put crap like this in EULA's, and you can use RedHat software *without* accepting to or agreeing with the GPL or BSD. (Only redistribution requires that)
You say that Red Hat is asking for welfare: bullshit. At worst they are asking for the playing field not to be tilted against them anymore than it already is. We consumers will bear the cost if we dont listen to them.
If you think the UCITA is good for the typical software user, then you are deluded.
At a local Q&A session held some months ago by my Virginia legislator, I asked my Virginia legislator to repeal UCITA, because it is hardly "Uniform", seeing as how only two of the fifty states have adopted it, and that the rest are unlikely to do so, given all the opposition to it. His reply? "Well, has it caused any problems?" Grrrr. So, the model is that our legislators pass laws willy nilly at the behest of industry, and we wait for things to go wrong? I suppose that he thinks that all sorts of software companies will relocate to Virginia to take advantage of our coddling them. I didn't have the presence of mind (or the rudeness, I guess) to complain at the time that he'd sold my rights for a buck.
Well, does this mean open source projects will NEVER go out of beta?
Simple as this, you cant be liable for a product that IS BEING tested, right?
Crap, I thought the "beta" process was already ridiculously long in OSS.
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
A warranty is all about fitness for purpose, not about compensation for any minor bug. Unless it actually does damage, all I can do is request a refund if the software is unsuitable for its purpose, or dmages if the software causes damage Take gcc as an example. This has a couple of minor bugs, and a biggy that could allow a user to delete arbitrary files. This doesn't matter though. I bought the compiler for the sole purpose of compiling C programs on a single user machine. It is therefore fit for the purpose that I bought it. If for example, I find a bug that prevents me from writing programs that are bigger than 100k, then I would fully expect a refund. Likewise, if I purchased a Windows binary version that wouldn't run under windows I would expect a full refund. If it fails to compile a program written in Java, then that is my problem since it was sold to me for the purpose of compiling C code. If attempting this actually caused damage, I would expect compensation for the damage. If I used it recklessly and wrote a C program to trash my hard drive, then that is my problem. I know from experience with the software that there are very few bugs that could make it unsuitable for people. I would happily sell it to anyone as a C compiler at a price that gives me a reasonable profit after costs fo refunding about 1% of people who find that they need support for certain functiuonality that is not correctly implemented. To cover myself for expensive failure, I'd simply find an insurance company that will cover me in case of damage. Given that I can demonstrate that there are several thousand users (millions maybe), and not one of them has had the software cause damage, I can be sure that the premiums will be low.
Digital used to put out a document, called the software product description (SPD), and then warrantied that the software would perform as the SPD said.
Users would either get a problem reported as a bug, and fixed, or could get their money back.
Linux should do the same, each distribution should have such a document, stating what Linux does, and warrants against it. If a problem is found, either accept the problem as a bug, and promise a resolution. Or give the money back, that was paid for the distro.
It isn't that far from the current Linux model, in that there is an army of people looking to fix various bugs, IE things that don't work as documented.
The big difference is
1/ Free Software is software labelled "We think it does this here is the source if it doesn't do what you want you can change it"
2/ Closed says "We are telling you that it does this you cannot change it if it doesn't"
That's a pretty big difference to me and the main reason why I think it is unfair to enforce warranty on Free Software distribution.
It's like saying
Hey buddy you struggling to open that door with your arms full. Here let me provide you an opened door, but the think t*at walking into the half openeed door and blaming you! You offered something that they took you didn't sell them a service and fail to fulfill it.
Oooops. Meant to post as plain text, not HTML.
A warranty is all about fitness for purpose, not about compensation for any minor bug. Unless it actually does damage, all I can do is request a refund if the software is unsuitable for its purpose, or dmages if the software causes damage
Take gcc as an example. This has a couple of minor bugs, and a biggy that could allow a user to delete arbitrary files. This doesn't matter though. I bought the compiler for the sole purpose of compiling C programs on a single user machine. It is therefore fit for the purpose that I bought it.
If for example, I find a bug that prevents me from writing programs that are bigger than 100k, then I would fully expect a refund. Likewise, if I purchased a Windows binary version that wouldn't run under windows I would expect a full refund.
If it fails to compile a program written in Java, then that is my problem since it was sold to me for the purpose of compiling C code. If attempting this actually caused damage, I would expect compensation for the damage.
If I used it recklessly and wrote a C program to trash my hard drive, then that is my problem.
I know from experience with the software that there are very few bugs that could make it unsuitable for people. I would happily sell it to anyone as a C compiler at a price that gives me a reasonable profit after costs fo refunding about 1% of people who find that they need support for certain functiuonality that is not correctly implemented. To cover myself for expensive failure, I'd simply find an insurance company that will cover me in case of damage. Given that I can demonstrate that there are several thousand users (millions maybe), and not one of them has had the software cause damage, I can be sure that the premiums will be low.
If my TV and video use the same codes for the remote control, causing me to tape over my wedding video, who is responsible?
If I buy a replacement wheel that comes off my car because the car and wheel manufacturers interpreted the specifications differently, who is responsible?
In your example, why should I have to pay because other coders wrote crappy software?
Sorry, this is one I'll agree with and link arms for. The "it'll kill our industry" is pretty much the same argument the chemical plant in Front Royal, VA used, after causing cancer rates in the area to rise dramatically, especially in children.
If you don't want to stand behind it, I don't want to stand in front of it.
Would the UCITA warranty requirements apply to alpha and beta releases? I haven't seen any mention of this topic, so I'd assume that the law treats all software the same in this respect.
If so, it would effectively stop such releases, since they would be a guaranteed legal and financial disaster. But clearly labelled alpha and beta releases are a very good approach to getting customer feedback, both for bugs and for features that are difficult to understand (or missing).
This is one of the ways in which software is different from most other commercial products. It's fairly rare for companies to provide test versions of products to customers, though it does happen. But it's very common with software.
If the UCITA inhibits alpha and beta releases, the result would be much lower quality software.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
As long as consumers have some reasonable idea of what they are buying, warranty or not, this shouldn't be a problem. If you are going to spend money for something, read the reviews and what sort of testing has been done and comments from users. The US legal system allows an enormous amount of frivolous cases to be heard as if they had merit. Million dollar lawsuits over a $200 piece of software that has an unintentional bug is insane (intentional bugs or viruses are different). If it wipes valuable data that there is no backup for, whose fault is that? The people not smart enough to backup their data properly. Tort reform is crucial to the IT industry and most other areas of life.
I mean the metal turning kind can make any tool for you that BMW can make. Think of it as real open sourse hardware.
Business is business and if you can't provide and reasonably (based on a legal definition fo reasonable, not some /. geeks idea of reasonable) support your product then you should not be in business.
OK, fine. For Redhat, their product would mean, what?
So it is reasonable to expect them to warrant that the CD behaves about as reliably as other CDs. And maybe, to warrant their installer or kernel mods (if any) to some degree. But why should they be responsible for everything on the CD?
Simply state the purpose as "hard-disk filler": This product is guaranteed to occupy more than 50 kilobytes on your hard disk. Any other use is at your own discretion.
.sigs: Just Say No!
The Oklahoma warranty that comes with most software clearly states:
If it breaks in half, you get to keep both parts.
Offering a stronger warranty isn't in the best interests of developers, because it adds liability. That's certainly something that would add weight to "Trustworthy Computing" and "Unbreakable" databases. Until legislation (such as the UCITA) specifies what legal warranty a user can expect from paid software, I won't expect to get one.
In any event, I'd expect different treatment for source code than binaries, seeing as how you can fix it if something breaks, or pay someone else who can.
JH
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Hah! Microsoft would never allow itself to be forced to put out a good product.
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
Industry-standard warranties are designed to ensure mechantability. This is most applicable when the user doesn't have an option of what how to get support for what he's bought. With Open Source/Free Software, this is not an issue; the user can fix it himself or hire a third-party. If the user wants a warranty, then consider paying for one by buying a RedHat product; however, don't mandate that RedHat always provide one.
In this day and age I'm certainly not a fully free-market advocate, but I certainly don't see a problem with having users simply pay for warranties when they want one. With Open Source/Free Software, they are free to choose their support; there is no reason to tie together the seller with the supporter. This tie is only true for proprietary software, where all of the support companies are beholden to the proprietary vendor.
I agree with you about the car warranty analogy. However, I have an interesting question for you and all the /.'ers:
If the commercial product must carry a warranty, what is the commercial product regardig Red Hat Linux?
Arguably it is the entire distribution and not any piece of included software not developed exclusively for this distribution. Or it includes every piece of code included with the distribution.
The problem with the UCITA is that it does not make this clear-- it would require a test case in court and Red Hat really doesn't want to have to be that test case. The question is, would RedHat have to warranty PostgreSQL or just the integration factors of PostgreSQL within the distribution?
Also, what constitutes price of media? If you can freely download the software, but I charge for a support contract, is this different under UCITA than selling the software outright? (Probably, but IANAL, and it might require a test case.)
A lawyer once told me "you don't want to be a test case." In other words, if you want to keep out of trouble, follow an extremely careful interpretation of the law and avoid all gray areas. I think that Red Hat's concern is that they could end up fielding the majority of these test cases.
To play devil's advocate here-- so what if this destroys Red Hat? Maybe we need to move toward a community maintained distribution. After all it would be hard to sue the Debian developers under these laws. Red Hat could adapt and encourage other developers to help with building the next generation distribution based on their earlier work, and if they can't adapt, well, then thy won't make it anyway.
Again, IANAL, and I think it would be interesting to hear others' opinions on how these changes could affect open source software.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Unfortunately, if this is a requirement, then the distribution media will need to be encoded to ensure that you must have encountered the notice before being able to access the software.
This is still a bad law. And we are only skimming the surface. (It was reported be 2,000 pages long a year ago. How long is it now?)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
...imagine trying to provide warranties on all the packages available to Debian users, for instance, or every bit of software included with Mandrake Linux.
Well okay, here's my shot:
Purpose of the software: To fill your terminal with strange characters as you attempt to install it.
Warrantee: We at Buskaatt Inc. guarantee that, when you attempt to configure and (if you get this far) actually compile the software, you will see a bunch of gibberish cross your terminal.
After that you're on your own.
If you get a receipt of purchase, you should get a warranty. Otherwise, all bets are off.
A stagnant economy, nothing to do on weekends, and a traffic system that was designed by M.C. Escher.
Oh wait, I thought it said UTICA.
Green-voting, republican-registered, socialist-libertarian.
with a liability equal to the total purchase price paid.
If my company has 1000 windows machines that crash everyday, I should be able to recoup some of what I paid for those licences.
If my debian box never crashes, then I have no reason to try to get my $2 back from cheap-bytes.
Perhaps there exists divergent conceptions of what the term warranty implies; and I would assume that the more generally accepted definition entails slightly more than a unilateral guarantee as to claims of product fitness or an acceptable degree of accountability to the quality of services offered.
Now, IANAL, but warranty seems to me to imply much more than just a weak sense of obligation of a producer to bolster its claims through some sort of consumer protection scheme, like product replacement or cost compensation. Suffice it to say that I feel there is much graver responsibility expected of a producer with regard to the protection of the consumer.
What is interesting to note, however, is that there seems to be some sort of magical formula that exempts software vendors from the types of legal guarantees that all other industries are subject to.
For example, even the more popular Microsoft EULAs fall short on these terms.
What I mean to say is that there is no implied warrenty as to the fitness of any of Microsoft's software in any of the EULAs that I have read. In fact, I would assert that they have no intent whatsoever to insure the fitness and behaviour of their product outside of the general extent of their support services.
So, if, for example, .NET Server saw it fit to arbitrarily vanquish any and all ext3 partitions that it discovered on my hard disk, seeking to preserve some sort of convoluted sense of system security, Microsoft has, by means of the EULA, gained unequivocal impunity from any of the retributions that may ensue from charges that I might bring against them for loss of critical, irreplaceable data.
And I am just using MS as an illustration. In fact, I think that one might be hard pressed to find any EULA that warrants the software in such a way as to insure the fitness and behaviour of the application in all environments.
Making Free Software developers liable for damages is a truly scary thing. But warranties, even mandatory, for Free Software is a nothingburger.
I will gladly refund the full purchase price for my software to any disatisfied parties. Duh! The purchase price was zero!
Commercial distributions should also have no qualms about including a warranty. It has nothing to do with the number of packages. It has everything to do with the purchase price.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
There are exceptions, like UPS units, but most non-software
products state on the warrantee card that the liability of
the manufacturer is limited to repair or replacement of the
product or refund of the purchase price. Dammages to other
items is normally not covered. If your stereo's tape deck
starts eating cassette tapes while it's still under warrantee
(usually not more than 3 years tops, sometimes 1), they'll
fix or replace the tape deck, but if you lost a unique tape
to the incident, you are unlikely to collect dammages without
hiring expensive lawyers. (Sufficiently expensive lawyers
can collect dammages for almost anything, warrantee or no
warrantee, but that is another topic for another day.)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Some people think that if Americans shot all the lawyers in the world, that suddenly America would be a wonderful, less expensive place to live.
People used the expression "calling a spade a spade" to object to calling Negroes "blacks", "African-Americans", etc., instead of the (at the time) commonly-used "N-word".
A similar racist expression that I've seen here is "the pot calling the kettle black", which originally meant calling someone an insulting name ("black", or Negro), when the caller exhibited some of the same characteristics.
Anally yours,
The Grammar Natzi
Isn't the "fairness" to different businesses. It's the lawyer friendly addition of more legalease.
In actual application, UCITA attempts to create a "default" license model under which all software is sold. Then it creates mechanisms companies can use to over-ride the defaults. One of these mechanisms happens to be "click-wrapped" agreements. This really just means more legalese for everyone, and which ever companies hire lots of lawyers benefit. (Redhat included)
If the courts really do feel that software companies haven't been responsible, they should hit the co's with fines based on what was charged for faulty product. This is how consumer law has worked for many years. If you sell something and the consumer becomes dissatisfied, you'll probably have to give those dissatisfied a refund.
Perhaps what is really missing in UCITA is a gaurantee that legal liablity for software producers won't exceed price charged, unless extra warranties were offered. Also, that when not sold at retail some risk should remain with the consumer.
If RedHat really is worried about being charged more than they were paid in liability fees, then I commend them for knowing they should be scared, and I hope they get better at stating their case.
If instead, they are worried that they may have to give a refund on copies of their software where customers are legitimately dissatisfied, then I hope they quit whining, and behave like a real business.
Skinner: Superintendent, I hope you're ready for mouth-watering hamburgers.
Chalmers: I thought we were having steamed clams.
Skinner: Oh, no, I said, "steamed hams." That's what I call hamburgers.
Chalmers: You call hamburgers steamed hams.
Skinner: Yes, it's a regional dialect.
Chalmers: Uh-huh. What region?
Skinner: Uh, upstate New York.
Chalmers: Really. Well, I'm from Utica and I never heard anyone use the phrase, "steamed hams."
Skinner: Oh, not in Utica, no; it's an Albany expression.
Chalmers: I see.
Hopefully we'll get a story about the Northern Lights so I can finish quoting the scene.
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
Its a known "BS good stuff about Linux and use ./ +5 keywords" troll. I can even tell he is BSing when he mentions Linux, and I hardly use Linux.
Last I checked, Red Hat was trying to make money selling Linux ditributions on CD and other services too. They should be held to the same standards as MS. Given that, they probably don't have much to worry about
Vote for Pedro
I sereously doupt you could make a person libal for gifts.
Yes RedHat is hurt but not as a free software company but as a software vender.
RedHat often releases versions of RedHat that are by the authors own standards "Not ready" as part of RedHats compleate product.
What this means is Microsoft can't dodge responsability and RedHat can't get away with defective releases. Both companys compeate for worst os release ever.
Free software itself won't be effected. Unless RedHat masters FUD as they seem to be getting a grip on it with this issue.
If you give a friend a present your not libal for defects in the present even if you made it.
Oh yeah...
I am not a legal expert of any sort what so ever prioid and to suggest otherwise is Baka.
(Yes I had to throw in the word Baka)
I don't actually exist.
After all, the yankees are not alone in the Uiverse.
fucking stupid mods
i suppose mentioning Nader is potentially flamable content, but get a fucking grip, the parent should be floating around +2~3 insightful
Interventionism by George Reisman (Pepperdine University).
It is instructive to never forget that the consumer always bears all costs, since consumers are the only source of wealth.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
My bigger problem in the Open Source community right now is how the law deals with coders who submit code to a project.
If you work at a company and submit your companies IP or patents in patch or feature upgrade to an Open Source project, then currently it looks like the law says everyone who was involved with coding the project is liable for IP theft, patent theft, and possible copyright violations. This is reguardless of what they did or didn't know about, and reguardless if they were lied to or not about the nature of the code and coprights, IP, patents etc.
What is the Open Source community and the legal system going to do about this to fix and is there anything it can do?
If you want to enforce liability, just limit the amount that can be recovered to twice the amount paid for the software or some such. Any factor times free is still nothing. Boom, free-as-in-beer software has no problems.
Not that I agree that liability is the way to go. It certainly sounds appealing, but computers really are a different sort of beast. I haven't made up my mind yet.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.