GPL and Python modules.

[Cliff Wells]

On Mon, 2004-10-25 at 15:37 -0400, Peter Hansen wrote:
> Jorge Godoy wrote:
> > Jorge Godoy <godoy at ieee.org> writes:
> > 
> > 
> >>Peter Hansen <peter at engcorp.com> writes:
> >>
> >>
> >>>Whatever gave you the idea you are obligated to provide support?!
> >>
> >>One has such an obligation here in .br.  Our law demands that and a
> >>license can't override what is stated in the law, so... 
> > 
> > 
> > Just to make it clear: I was referring to obligations to software
> > distributed/sold here...
> 
> Now you tell me.  :-)
> 
> It's probably the case in the majority of markets that one is
> obligated to provide some kind of support for the products one
> sells.

Certainly here in the U.S. there is little chance of supplying things
without warranty.  That applies to almost anything, not just software.
Even if you state upfront that something is provided "as is", most
states provide additional protections to the customer.  The extent of
the protection varies from state-to-state, so even if the state that you
are based in doesn't impose such restrictions on freedom from liability,
if the customer is in a different state, you may find yourself bound by
the guarantees provided in the customer's state of residence.

As far as protecting oneself against liability, the only real guarantee
of that is to simply not provide *anything*.  Frankly I fail to see how
open-source versus closed-source matters at all in this area.  If I
write a program in Visual Basic and the program fails due to some bug in
the programming language or libraries, I'm still going to be the one
liable to the customer (especially since it was my choice to use sub-par
tools).  I suppose I might be able to sue Microsoft in return, but I
have doubts about how well that's going to fly in practical terms ;)  In
fact, I'd forward that open source is superior in this respect since I
can either fix it myself or pay someone to fix it for me if I'm unable
(and I've done this in the last week, so I hereby invoke the voice of
experience <wink>).


Regards,
Cliff

-- 
Cliff Wells <clifford.wells at comcast.net>