6 ms·

Can somebody elaborate? The article claims the MIT license's no-warranty clause has been voided in the UK, but provides no details or a source.

asfarley 4y ago
Yeah this really needs some context.
- midmagico 4y ago
  Look down a bit, nullc wrote a large paragraph explaining what's going on.
jsnell 4y ago
As a non-lawyer, I don't think it's correct to say that it has been voided. My reading of the appeals judgement is that there is no case law either way on whether open source developers could be considered to have a fiduciary duty to stakeholders (or under what circumstances that duty would exist), but there is at least a plausible case to be made. To establish precedent in a situation where none exists, the trial should proceed.
- spac 4y ago
  do you have a link handy for the appeals judgement?
  - jsnell 4y ago
    From nullc's comment: https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_CA-2022-001050_1062_2184_Final_Judgment_03-02-2023.pdf https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_...
    - gumby 4y ago
      But if you click on that link you will not find the word "warranty" used in any way, and in fact the bases of the case seem not to involve any warranty-like responsibility at all. So I'm confused. The situation described in nullc's comment seem pretty horrible!
      - yw3410 4y ago
        The term used is fiduciary duty/responsibility.
        gumby 4y ago
        Thank you. Reading your comment, and then the link in nullc's comment, where the warranty language is included at para 110, it is clear that the warranty is not actually the issue but the disclaimer of liability. I wonder if the license were modified to add, "if you do not agree to these terms you do not have a grant of license for this software." Separately, when I look at the case, it seems to be a provision of service issue, so the software itself should be a red herring. Of course anything can happen in a lawsuit, even one that appears to be as illegitimate as this one.
      - jsnell 4y ago
        So, I'm also confused by your response. I wrote that it's not correct that the no-warranty clause of the MIT license has been declared void. And you seem to be saying that this is in conflict with the appeals judgement not talking about the warranty clause. But that's what I was saying! Nothing has been decided about the MIT license. The lawsuit was originally dismissed without trial since the lower courts thought that the lawsuit did not have a chance of succeeding due to resting on the claim that the Bitcoin developers had a fiduciary duty to Bitcoin users (i.e. to act in the users' best interest). The appeals court thought that there's a legit case to be made for such a fiduciary duty existing. They did not say it exists, or under what circumstances it would exist. Just that there should be a trial to determine that.
        nullc 4y ago
        You are right, but there is also a level of reality that needs to be injected: If open source can't be confident of a dismissal these kinds of claims on a summary basis it probably can't exist. The cost of winning at trial is great enough to be ruinous especially relative to a volunteer effort. In the case of Bitcoin we're probably better off in the sense that there are wealthy supporters willing to step up and take on costs. But there isn't anything about this that couldn't be applied more broadly to impose far ranging duties on other open source developers. (FWIW, a fiduciary duty is far broader than just a duty to act in their best interest, it is a duty of single minded loyalty to put their interests over all others, including the fiduciary's own).
- SLWW 4y ago
  Though how could they possibly justify that? If there's been no exchange of money; how would they be beholden to stake holders?
- pdonis 4y ago
  As far as licenses like the MIT license are concerned, though, the question would not be whether a fiduciary duty exists in this case, but whether that duty is based on the software license. Since Bitcoin involves financial instruments, I would think it much more likely that any claim of fiduciary duty would have to be because the Bitcoin developers or their organization are performing financial functions, not because of any open source software they are providing. So I'm not sure even a ruling against Bitcoin in this case (which of course I hope does not happen) would automatically make every open source developer in the world a fiduciary of every one of their users, regardless of license disclaimers. Edit: The appeals court opinion that was posted elsewhere in this thread appears to bear out what I said above. Paragraph 40 of the ruling says: "The essence of Tulip’s case is that the result of all this is that the developers, having undertaken to control the software of the relevant bitcoin network, thereby have and exercise control over the property held by others (i.e. bitcoin), and that this has the result in law that they owe fiduciary duties to the true owners of that property with the result that, on the facts of this case, they are obliged to introduce a software patch along the lines described above, and help Tulip recover its property." In other words, Tulip is claiming (rightly or wrongly) that Bitcoin is its fiduciary because Bitcoin controls what version of the software is used on their network, and therefore controls how Bitcoin assets, which are valuable property, are transferred from one party to another. That's a straightforward financial argument and does not have anything to do with any software license. It certainly doesn't imply that any open source developer assumes a fiduciary duty merely by publicly releasing software.
  - sidewndr46 4y ago
    It most definitely does establish that any open source developer has fiduciary duty. Bitcoin is not financial software. It's nothing more than a peer to peer network with a novel consensus algorithm. With this precedent you could effectively sue BitTorrent developers for not modifying the code to keep backups of your data.
    - pdonis 4y ago
      > Bitcoin is not financial software. The software itself is not; but Bitcoin's control over what version of the software gets used on its network is a financial function, since it controls how financial assets (Bitcoin holdings) get transferred from one party to another. And that function is the basis for the claim of fiduciary duty, not the fact that Bitcoin publishes its software as open source. > It's nothing more than a peer to peer network with a novel consensus algorithm. The software itself is, yes. But the network is more than that: it has a particular party, Bitcoin, that controls what version of the software is accepted on the network. That control is what the plaintiff in the lawsuit is claiming as a basis for a fiduciary duty. > With this precedent you could effectively sue BitTorrent developers for not modifying the code to keep backups of your data. No, you can't, because there is no corresponding financial function provided by the BitTorrent developers. They don't control where you download files from or where you store them.
smcin 4y ago
Responding to several people who had asked for context: "Craig Wright’s [UK] lawsuit against multiple Bitcoin developers will go to trial" https://cryptoslate.com/craig-wrights-lawsuit-against-multiple-bitcoin-developers-will-go-to-trial/ https://cryptoslate.com/craig-wrights-lawsuit-against-multip...

asfarley 4y ago

Yeah this really needs some context.

midmagico 4y ago
Look down a bit, nullc wrote a large paragraph explaining what's going on.

jsnell 4y ago

As a non-lawyer, I don't think it's correct to say that it has been voided. My reading of the appeals judgement is that there is no case law either way on whether open source developers could be considered to have a fiduciary duty to stakeholders (or under what circumstances that duty would exist), but there is at least a plausible case to be made. To establish precedent in a situation where none exists, the trial should proceed.

spac 4y ago
do you have a link handy for the appeals judgement?
- jsnell 4y ago
  From nullc's comment: https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_CA-2022-001050_1062_2184_Final_Judgment_03-02-2023.pdf https://nt4tn.net/scammer-craig-wright/Tulip_v_Van_Der_Laan_...
  - gumby 4y ago
    But if you click on that link you will not find the word "warranty" used in any way, and in fact the bases of the case seem not to involve any warranty-like responsibility at all. So I'm confused. The situation described in nullc's comment seem pretty horrible!
    - yw3410 4y ago
      The term used is fiduciary duty/responsibility.
      - gumby 4y ago
        Thank you. Reading your comment, and then the link in nullc's comment, where the warranty language is included at para 110, it is clear that the warranty is not actually the issue but the disclaimer of liability. I wonder if the license were modified to add, "if you do not agree to these terms you do not have a grant of license for this software." Separately, when I look at the case, it seems to be a provision of service issue, so the software itself should be a red herring. Of course anything can happen in a lawsuit, even one that appears to be as illegitimate as this one.
    - jsnell 4y ago
      So, I'm also confused by your response. I wrote that it's not correct that the no-warranty clause of the MIT license has been declared void. And you seem to be saying that this is in conflict with the appeals judgement not talking about the warranty clause. But that's what I was saying! Nothing has been decided about the MIT license. The lawsuit was originally dismissed without trial since the lower courts thought that the lawsuit did not have a chance of succeeding due to resting on the claim that the Bitcoin developers had a fiduciary duty to Bitcoin users (i.e. to act in the users' best interest). The appeals court thought that there's a legit case to be made for such a fiduciary duty existing. They did not say it exists, or under what circumstances it would exist. Just that there should be a trial to determine that.
      - nullc 4y ago
        You are right, but there is also a level of reality that needs to be injected: If open source can't be confident of a dismissal these kinds of claims on a summary basis it probably can't exist. The cost of winning at trial is great enough to be ruinous especially relative to a volunteer effort. In the case of Bitcoin we're probably better off in the sense that there are wealthy supporters willing to step up and take on costs. But there isn't anything about this that couldn't be applied more broadly to impose far ranging duties on other open source developers. (FWIW, a fiduciary duty is far broader than just a duty to act in their best interest, it is a duty of single minded loyalty to put their interests over all others, including the fiduciary's own).
SLWW 4y ago
Though how could they possibly justify that? If there's been no exchange of money; how would they be beholden to stake holders?
pdonis 4y ago
As far as licenses like the MIT license are concerned, though, the question would not be whether a fiduciary duty exists in this case, but whether that duty is based on the software license. Since Bitcoin involves financial instruments, I would think it much more likely that any claim of fiduciary duty would have to be because the Bitcoin developers or their organization are performing financial functions, not because of any open source software they are providing. So I'm not sure even a ruling against Bitcoin in this case (which of course I hope does not happen) would automatically make every open source developer in the world a fiduciary of every one of their users, regardless of license disclaimers. Edit: The appeals court opinion that was posted elsewhere in this thread appears to bear out what I said above. Paragraph 40 of the ruling says: "The essence of Tulip’s case is that the result of all this is that the developers, having undertaken to control the software of the relevant bitcoin network, thereby have and exercise control over the property held by others (i.e. bitcoin), and that this has the result in law that they owe fiduciary duties to the true owners of that property with the result that, on the facts of this case, they are obliged to introduce a software patch along the lines described above, and help Tulip recover its property." In other words, Tulip is claiming (rightly or wrongly) that Bitcoin is its fiduciary because Bitcoin controls what version of the software is used on their network, and therefore controls how Bitcoin assets, which are valuable property, are transferred from one party to another. That's a straightforward financial argument and does not have anything to do with any software license. It certainly doesn't imply that any open source developer assumes a fiduciary duty merely by publicly releasing software.
- sidewndr46 4y ago
  It most definitely does establish that any open source developer has fiduciary duty. Bitcoin is not financial software. It's nothing more than a peer to peer network with a novel consensus algorithm. With this precedent you could effectively sue BitTorrent developers for not modifying the code to keep backups of your data.
  - pdonis 4y ago
    > Bitcoin is not financial software. The software itself is not; but Bitcoin's control over what version of the software gets used on its network is a financial function, since it controls how financial assets (Bitcoin holdings) get transferred from one party to another. And that function is the basis for the claim of fiduciary duty, not the fact that Bitcoin publishes its software as open source. > It's nothing more than a peer to peer network with a novel consensus algorithm. The software itself is, yes. But the network is more than that: it has a particular party, Bitcoin, that controls what version of the software is accepted on the network. That control is what the plaintiff in the lawsuit is claiming as a basis for a fiduciary duty. > With this precedent you could effectively sue BitTorrent developers for not modifying the code to keep backups of your data. No, you can't, because there is no corresponding financial function provided by the BitTorrent developers. They don't control where you download files from or where you store them.

smcin 4y ago

Responding to several people who had asked for context: "Craig Wright’s [UK] lawsuit against multiple Bitcoin developers will go to trial" https://cryptoslate.com/craig-wrights-lawsuit-against-multiple-bitcoin-developers-will-go-to-trial/ https://cryptoslate.com/craig-wrights-lawsuit-against-multip...