Draft of Principles of the Law of Software Contracts with Significant Problems for Open Source Software

Description

"American Law Institute Publishes Draft of Principles of the Law of Software Contracts with Significant Problems for Open Source Software. The ALI is a very prestigious and influential non profit institution whose purpose is “to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs.” The Principles state that the “best practices” in software licensing would be to include two new “non disclaimable” warranties which would result in significant problems for the open source community. The warranties are the (1) warranty of non infringement of intellectual property rights (such as patents or copyrights) if the contributor knew or should have known of the infringement and the contributor holds himself out by occupation as having knowledge or skill peculiar to the software and (2) warranty of no hidden material defects. Current law (and all OSI approved licenses) permit the contributor (and any licensor) of open source software to completely disclaim all warranties i.e. promises about performance or non infringement which could result in liability to a contributor or a licensor(so called AS IS provisions). If accepted by the courts, these recommendations would have a significantly negative effect on open source licensors." (http://lawandlifesiliconvalley.com/blog/?p=56)