I'm not convinced that there is much benefit in having a long discussion on this point, so I shall make a reply and then let things fall as they may: Bankruptc

I'm not convinced that there is much benefit in having a long discussion on this point, so I shall make a reply and then let things fall as they may: Bankruptcy protection (much abused at that) is generally only available to people or companies who have exhausted their financial resources in an attempt to meet their obligations. It is not a protection that is available to people who simply cannot be bothered to put in an effort out of a plentiful account to meet the obligations that they have taken upon themselves. It is similar for creative works. If you attempt to keep something updated, make a reasonable effort to do so, and that simply becomes infeasibly expensive to continue doing without suffering some form of serious ruin, then that's fair enough. You made a reasonable attempt to meet your obligations, were wrong in your estimation of them, and being wrong shouldn't cost you everything you have. You didn't deal with your customer in, for lack of a better term, "bad faith" when you formed the implicit and/or declared contract upon which your deal wrested. Mistakes happen, people should attempt to ameliorate the consequences of that mistake to a reasonable amount in order to meet the obligations that they have taken upon themselves and keep the strength and value of their word, their ability to make commitments to others in the world, high. That is, I feel, different from simply deciding that one is not going to make a profit out of an obligation that they have taken upon themselves. And the strength of one's word is reflected in how much one will suffer in order to keep the obligations that one has formed. As is the value of any deal that someone might make with someone in the future. Someone's word is worth nothing when it is kept only in so far as it benefits them to keep it, and broken the next moment. I am unlikely to pay someone any sum of money, and would certainly not suffer them as an employee, if their attitude to their word, and the impressions that people could reasonably be expected to take away from what they said – the deals they made – was that they simply stopped trying to keep it the minute it ceased to be to their benefit to do so. Most people do not act in that manner, if they did the strength of someone's word would be almost meaningless and no deals would be made since the client could never expect to benefit from them. # As for the idea of selling something "as is", contract law is not that simple. If it were, then outside of situations in which both parties had significant forms of leverage, all goods and services would be exchanged only on an "as is" basis. We would find ourselves in a situation similar to the one that used to concern rail travel: in which terms and conditions absolutely removing any responsibility that the rail company had towards their passengers safety were found on the back of rail tickets. Insofar as one desires to be able to form valuable contracts, to trade things of value, one should desire to live in a system that enforces a certain lower bounds upon the behaviour of parties, and the equability of contracts that can be formed, within that system. Consequently, while I don't pretend to understand it anywhere near entirely, there will almost doubtless be limitations on the disclaimers that you can place on various implied warranties (though this depends upon the relative jurisdictions governing the contract at the time it's formed.) If one were relying on writing, "as is" on a piece of paper, and getting the client to sign it, as a means to escape their obligation with regards to their client's statutory rights, I would not much care for their chances. Most notably, as a matter of general principle, (and here we run into a problem, for the law may be different where you are,) it tends to be the case that one cannot form a contract entirely for one's own benefit. That is a contract, to be valid, must be equitable. A contract to the effect of "you shall give me your money, and in return I have no obligation to provide a good or service to you." Is clearly almost entirely, if not outright, to your benefit – and certainly of little to no benefit to your "customers" who in return for their money have no entitlement to any benefits nor access to reasonable redress in the even that they are denied something that you knowingly allowed them to form the impression they would receive. Likewise, contracts generally have to be decidable, that is to say that I cannot form a contract with you that goes something to the effect of, "as long as I want" or "as long as it is to my benefit." It simply does not matter what you choose to put in the contract if the contract itself is void, or voidable due to abuse of certain principles enshrined in the underlying statutes or common law that allow the formation of contracts to take place. Of course, if one buys a used car from a shady salesman, one has little hope of redress through the courts when it turns out that one was not being dealt with in good faith. That has more to do with the difficulty of making law apply to them, then it does a matter of principle or of justice. It strikes me that apps, for smart phones, (distinguished because Microsoft seems to be calling desktop programs apps these days,) bear significant similarities to the shady used-car salesman model. That strikes me as neither a moral nor a legal argument though - it strikes me more as an 'I can get away with it' argument.