Squeak Licence and Debian and Apple and Skolelinux

Dean_Swan at Mitel.COM Dean_Swan at Mitel.COM
Wed Mar 24 23:18:23 UTC 2004


Ross,

Disclaimer:  I am not a lawyer.

Just another thing to consider:  The "by using this software, you 
implicitly accept the terms of the license" is a genereally baseless and 
unenforcable claim.  The most strongly enforcable contracts are those in 
writing, signed by both parties.  Lower in strength would be "verbal 
contracts", and they are quite difficult to enforce without credible 
witnesses to the verbal agreement.  Somewhere lower in strength would be 
"You used my software, so I assume you saw, read and agreed to the terms 
of the license."  It is nearly impossible for a claimant to prove in a 
court of law that a user of the software was in any way aware of the 
license or it's terms.

The only true test here is to put something "out there" and see if anybody 
sues you.  If you use anything created by a third party in the creation of 
your product, you are automatically assuming liability for these third 
party elements.  For example, people tend to sue automobile manufacturers 
for damages as a result of failure of some component of the automobile, 
but auto manufacturers are star examples of "outsourcing-in-action".  If 
you aren't comfortable with the quality of your product, don't "put it out 
there" and expose yourself to associated the liabilities.  It is perfectly 
reasonable for Apple (or anyone else) to say that they are going to hold 
you responsible for any harm that you cause to come to them.  It is 
reasonable for them to hold you responsible even if they don't say that 
they will.

I firmly agree with the position Alan Kay has indicated many times (i.e. 
Don't worry about it.).

                                        -Dean






Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni.org>
Sent by: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org
03/24/04 05:09 PM
Please respond to The general-purpose Squeak developers list 

 
        To:     squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org
        cc:     Ross Boylan <RossBoylan at stanfordalumni.org>
        Subject:        Re: Squeak Licence and Debian and Apple and Skolelinux


On Wed, Mar 24, 2004 at 11:35:38AM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
> Ross --
> 
> The problem is that all of this is essentially ridiculous, because 
> there is no way to prevent anyone from suing anyone, regardless of 
> the disclaimers. So coming up with doomsday scenarios is not at all 
> helpful, and simply puts more of a scare into people who are easily 
> scared.
> 
This is true, but incomplete.  It is true that anyone can sue anyone
for any reason, and that no license can protect you completely from
that.

Your statement is incomplete because it avoids the fact that under the
squeak license, if someone sues Apple for whatever reason related to
squeak, you explicitly give Apple the right to drag you into it.
This puts anyone who accepts the license at a particular risk they
would not otherwise have.

> None of the licenses that are accepted by the OSI give anyone 
> protection from any suit.

I suspect none of them explicitly open the licensees up to liability
either.

> 
> In any case, it would be nicer if the BS was BS that scared people 
> less regardless of the actual facts and actual legalities.

I meant my examples more as jokes, but clearly the lawyers who drafted
the clause put it there for a reason, and anyone who takes it
seriously has some basis for being concerned.

Free + a potential time bomb <> free
> 
> I hereby (legally) resign from this thread.
> 
OK, taking you off the distribution list, though I'm kind of hoping
you'll see this. :)

> Alan

Some of the problem is a general cultural issue of law vs business or
most other activities.  Lawyers are paid to worry about the outside
chance, even if most of us think that's silly.  While most of us
consider the probabilities, lawyers tend to think more in terms of the
possibilities: anything that might conceivably happen should be dealt
with.  Perhaps because my father was a lawyer, I tend to take
contracts pretty seriously.  And, though I personally am pretty
comfortable using squeak because I recognize the chance I would get in
trouble is tiny, I really don't think organizations can be so casual.



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20040324/fb4220a8/attachment.htm


More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list