just too much confusion here to sort out > time to enshrine open-source software ... merely relying on an old copyright hack the copyright hack you're referri

just too much confusion here to sort out > time to enshrine open-source software ... merely relying on an old copyright hack the copyright hack you're referring to is the copyleft hack, associated primarily with GPL, whose hacker author (Stallman, and not that kind of author) chose to call "free software". (This is the idea that if you take a copy of copyleft software and use it to create a product, users of that product are permitted to see the source code if they want, just as you got to see the source code that you used to create it. If you don't want to agree to that, don't use that free software in your product) the people who chose to distinguish themselves (ESR Eric Raymond) from "copyleft free software" chose to call their movement "open source", and their disagreement was precisely with the requirement that you share and share alike what was shared with you; and their disagreement was not in regard to whether it was a copyright hack or a signed contract, it was the meaning or intent of the express user permission to see the source (which they like to portray as a restriction on their right to hide the source) so it doesn't make sense for you to conflate "open source" with the old copyright/copyleft hack, which more importantly has nothing at all to do with with warranties. seems to me the issue OP has brought up has more to do with "click/shrink wrap" licensing. I don't know where the UK stands on click&shrink wraps, but seems to me you'd attack entire ediface rather than specific terms within (although I am aware that european regulators (and to a lesser extent american consumer rights advocates) obsess over customer rights to warranties)