On Mon, 2006-04-10 at 16:57 +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
"Michael Peeters, a partner at Pinsent Masons, the law firm
behind OUT-LAW.COM, says warranties as to the performance and
even the title to the software could be implied into open source
licences by a British court."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/04/10/opensource_hidden_warranties/
Happily, you can register at their free breakfast briefing to hear more
about this important issue.
(In all seriousness, they are probably right about warranties to some
extent; I would like to see a Judge imply title given a licence
though... ;)
I've asked to be let in for the 25th in London, I rather suspect the
talk will be somewhat less exciting than the "GPL authors lose their
rights!" spin.
On the same basis, a judge could say that a proprietary license wasn't
reasonable and unilaterally give more rights to users. This has happened
in the USA with respect to transfer of licenses so I don;t see anything
particularly new in any of this.
I remember my old CPM documentation used to say very clearly