On 05/10/05 13:27 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
On Wednesday 05 Oct 2005 1:08 pm, Devdas Bhagat wrote:
why not? if free software is not professional and quality assured, of what use is it? since the software is free, the liability for breach of warranty or defect of quality would be different from the liability arising out of the same defects in commercial software. This is something to be worked on - but IMO responsible authors of free software should certainly give assurances of quality and warranties
My software works correctly. If you use it in unapproved ways (and that includes running anything else on the system), the guarantee is null and void. Oh, and that includes hardware and software combos.
now that you have poured cold water on it, i think it would be an interesting exercise to come up with a formulation of a warranty that could apply to free software - key thing is what is the liability, how to formulate and define that? interesting, intriguing and challenging
Go ahead. Software developers will issue warranties only in cases where they know and control the entire state of program execution. You can't complain if a car refuses to run under water and it was never advertised as doing so. If it fails under a set of controlled conditions, the manufacturer is liable. Multitasking operating systems just aren't controlled environments.
Devdas Bhagat