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No progress comes without risk. There's plenty of untested FUD, well exemplified by your linked comment, about how someday somehow someone might screw you, if

by gojomo 13y ago

No progress comes without risk. There's plenty of untested FUD, well exemplified by your linked comment, about how someday somehow someone might screw you, if you don't follow all the right lawyerly-approved licensing incantations. If someone wants to minimize risk and fuss, they should surely follow the lawyer-recommended course. But if they've got other goals, such as testing whether the FUD is true, and maybe eventually getting the legal precedents established that such lawyerly boilerplate isn't necessary for free uncompensated sharing of code, then they might follow another course. That other course might sometimes infuriate potential code-reusers, and appear reckless to experts about the traditional order. But once aware of the risks, it's the licensor's own chance to take. Of course, YMMV, IANAL, etc. (If there is any case of an open-source author being sued in a manner where simply having attached the right license boilerplate would have saved them, that would make an excellent front-page HN story.)

jsmeaton 13y ago
Yep. The whole system seems backwards. "This software is safe for use in a nuclear reactor". Not "this software, that I made in highschool for the lulz, is not safe to be used in a nuclear reactor". Software should come with guarantees if guarantees are needed. It should not come with an exhaustive list of non-guarantees.
- sthatipamala 13y ago
  You expect merchantability of products all the time. Otherwise, people could sell you all kinds of products with known, dangerous defects (e.g your car). Why should software be different?
  - gojomo 13y ago
    Why should free source code, published into the ether without any exchange of consideration, be held to the same standards as a product sold by a merchant?
  - jsmeaton 13y ago
    Packaged software that is sold, to me, is different to code that you put up on GitHub for safe keeping. But I still think we've gone in the wrong direction. And to your example regarding cars, such a guarantee could be "this car is safe to drive on [roads]". Replace "roads" with the legal name for surfaces where cars can be driven. The underlying problem though is that there are such a large number of people that refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. "But, your honour, the guarantee said I could drive on roads. It didn't mention anything about being blind folded while doing so. It wasn't my fault I'm now paralysed". A pretty ridiculous example; and probably a naive one as well. But the law systems we live with are way too complicated. And I feel the people, whose job is to "interpret" the law (judges) are doing a terrible job upholding the spirit of law.
  - anotherhue 13y ago
    If it's advertised as being suitable for important, dangerous things, and money changes hands, then sure I agree with you; but if a bug in glibc causes problems of an important and dangerous type, I don't see how any reasonable legal system could point the finger at the maintainers.
- rmc 13y ago
  Software should come with guarantees if guarantees are needed. It should not come with an exhaustive list of non-guarantees. Legally a lot of software (& things) comes with default guarantees. You have to opt out of some guarantees.
tptacek 13y ago
Are you qualified to assess the linked comment as "FUD"? If so, how?
- gojomo 13y ago
  The argument stands on its own merits, not my qualifications. You've extrapolated DannyBee's mention of some risk of implied-warranty lawsuit all the way up to "lose your house many years later because you chose a whimsical license". But, there are no examples of something like that happening in the open source domain. It's worst-case speculation, without precedent. That's spreading "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" to deter a particular course of action. Now perhaps, fear is justified, and the uncertainty will be resolved in some future case that confirms it was wise to be afraid. (Literal "FUD" isn't necessarily false!) Or maybe there's a prior case that hasn't yet been mentioned – that's why I've asked for an example. But for now, the idea of someday losing your house over a insufficient disclaimer-of-warranties on freely-published, unmarketed, uncompensated source code is just a scary bedtime story. A few years ago there was legalistic FUD about how releasing code as public domain was dangerous; without a license you'd be at risk, and no amount of disclaimerizing could save you, because without either a license or contract, the disclaimers had no force. Thankfully, that FUD has receded, so that now even legalistic worrywarts can recommend the CC0 or unlicense.org dedication as a safe and reasonable approach. I predict such common-sense progress will continue, driven by irreverent young programmers with no patience for obsolete complexity. But that's a socioeconomic prediction, not a legal opinion. If being airtight-alright by all the lawyers and judges is someone's top priority, they should take your circumspect advice.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    No, I didn't extrapolate past what 'DannyBee said. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5733520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5733520
    - gojomo 13y ago
      OK, but your original link didn't include that particular scare-scenario (either in the linked comment or followups). So this "you-could-lose-your-house-by-using-WTFPL" FUD indeed originates with DannyBee.

by gojomo 13y ago

jsmeaton 13y ago

Yep. The whole system seems backwards. "This software is safe for use in a nuclear reactor". Not "this software, that I made in highschool for the lulz, is not safe to be used in a nuclear reactor". Software should come with guarantees if guarantees are needed. It should not come with an exhaustive list of non-guarantees.

sthatipamala 13y ago
You expect merchantability of products all the time. Otherwise, people could sell you all kinds of products with known, dangerous defects (e.g your car). Why should software be different?
- gojomo 13y ago
  Why should free source code, published into the ether without any exchange of consideration, be held to the same standards as a product sold by a merchant?
- jsmeaton 13y ago
  Packaged software that is sold, to me, is different to code that you put up on GitHub for safe keeping. But I still think we've gone in the wrong direction. And to your example regarding cars, such a guarantee could be "this car is safe to drive on [roads]". Replace "roads" with the legal name for surfaces where cars can be driven. The underlying problem though is that there are such a large number of people that refuse to take responsibility for their own actions. "But, your honour, the guarantee said I could drive on roads. It didn't mention anything about being blind folded while doing so. It wasn't my fault I'm now paralysed". A pretty ridiculous example; and probably a naive one as well. But the law systems we live with are way too complicated. And I feel the people, whose job is to "interpret" the law (judges) are doing a terrible job upholding the spirit of law.
- anotherhue 13y ago
  If it's advertised as being suitable for important, dangerous things, and money changes hands, then sure I agree with you; but if a bug in glibc causes problems of an important and dangerous type, I don't see how any reasonable legal system could point the finger at the maintainers.
rmc 13y ago
Software should come with guarantees if guarantees are needed. It should not come with an exhaustive list of non-guarantees. Legally a lot of software (& things) comes with default guarantees. You have to opt out of some guarantees.

tptacek 13y ago

Are you qualified to assess the linked comment as "FUD"? If so, how?

gojomo 13y ago
The argument stands on its own merits, not my qualifications. You've extrapolated DannyBee's mention of some risk of implied-warranty lawsuit all the way up to "lose your house many years later because you chose a whimsical license". But, there are no examples of something like that happening in the open source domain. It's worst-case speculation, without precedent. That's spreading "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt" to deter a particular course of action. Now perhaps, fear is justified, and the uncertainty will be resolved in some future case that confirms it was wise to be afraid. (Literal "FUD" isn't necessarily false!) Or maybe there's a prior case that hasn't yet been mentioned – that's why I've asked for an example. But for now, the idea of someday losing your house over a insufficient disclaimer-of-warranties on freely-published, unmarketed, uncompensated source code is just a scary bedtime story. A few years ago there was legalistic FUD about how releasing code as public domain was dangerous; without a license you'd be at risk, and no amount of disclaimerizing could save you, because without either a license or contract, the disclaimers had no force. Thankfully, that FUD has receded, so that now even legalistic worrywarts can recommend the CC0 or unlicense.org dedication as a safe and reasonable approach. I predict such common-sense progress will continue, driven by irreverent young programmers with no patience for obsolete complexity. But that's a socioeconomic prediction, not a legal opinion. If being airtight-alright by all the lawyers and judges is someone's top priority, they should take your circumspect advice.
- tptacek 13y ago
  No, I didn't extrapolate past what 'DannyBee said. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5733520 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5733520
  - gojomo 13y ago
    OK, but your original link didn't include that particular scare-scenario (either in the linked comment or followups). So this "you-could-lose-your-house-by-using-WTFPL" FUD indeed originates with DannyBee.