Basile Starynkevitch <bas...@starynkevitch.net> writes: > Perhaps someone made a mistake, and it could be me (because I don't > understand lawyer language). Apparently, the sensitive sentence in the > document is something like "Developer will indemnify FSF for all > losses if the claim is not spurious".
That is not unlimited liability. That clause says that if you contribute code which you do not own to the FSF, and the correct owner of the code sues the FSF, and wins the court case, and the FSF is forced to pay damages to the true owner, then you are legally responsible to cover the FSF's costs, both the costs of damages and the cost of litigation. Note that this is *not* a patent clause. This clause only refers to you contributing code for which you are not the copyright holder. This clause does not make you legally liable for violating any patents, only for violating copyright law. In a lawsuit for the violation of copyright law, the true owner can ask for penalties of the actual losses sustained by the owner, and in some cases can ask for triple that amount of money. So when considering the potential liability of this clause, you need to consider 1) you must somehow contribute code that you copied from somebody else, rather than writing yourself; 2) the actual owner must discover that and must decide to sue the FSF; 3) the actual owner must show that the distribution by the FSF somehow caused them to lose money; 4) you may be liable for three times the amount of the money that they lost; 5) if the FSF chooses to fight this in court, which of course they would not do if they were in the wrong, then you would have to pay their legal fees. So, if you screw up badly, there is liability, yes. Unlimited liability, no. Ian