Re: [Fsfe-uk] GPL licence untested, authors could lose their rights in UK

[Chris Croughton]

On Tue, Apr 11, 2006 at 12:41:24PM +0100, Ian Lynch wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-04-11 at 12:02 +0100, Chris Croughton wrote:
> > On Mon, Apr 10, 2006 at 06:49:11PM +0100, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > 
> > > I'm pretty sure, though, in the case where software is sold (or, a
> > > software licence - I don't think the judiciary will care) it will need
> > > to meet the usual standards (e.g., be fit for purpose). I don't think
> > > those standards are terribly high though :/
> > 
> > It will?  So can I please get my money back if I buy a shrink-wrapped
> > software package which proves to be not fit for the purpose for which it
> > was sold to me?  Has anyone ever managed to get money back for such a
> > claim from MS, for instance?
> 
> Not that exact claim, but in California customers did for being charged
> for software that they didn't want that was pre-installed on the
> computer. 

How about outside California?  As I recall others who tried that in
other places didn't get any refunds.

> The issue with fit for purpose is that its subjective to a degree. You
> could try a legal battle based on the fact that any operating system
> with security holes is not fit for purpose but it would be expensive and
> you have no certainty of winning. Such a judgement would also affect
> GNU/Linux on the grounds that its not perfectly secure.

Since nothing is 'perfectly' secure such a claim would be rightly thrown
out.  But for instance a C++ compiler which doesn't come close to the
standard should be returnable regardless of what the shrink-wrap licence
says (typically such things only cover damaged media, for instance).  Or
an HTML creating package which produces rubbish.

Such a judgement would probably be limited to "what you paid for it",
anyway, so returning GNU/Linux on the basis that it couldn't do what it
was claimed to do would be limited to whatever the supplier charged (if
it was an 'Enterprise' version as a boxed item, for instance).  If it's
pulled from the net then their would likely be no refund of download
costs (if any), but if a distributor sold a boxed version which was
broken then there should be.

Chris C