I am worried, that the disclaimer and limitation of warranty clauses 15 and 16 by GPLv3 are legally non-binding, ineffective and would be disregarded by courts.
This is because I've read on gnu.org the position that the GPL is not a contract [1] and due to the following quote of GPLv3: > 9. Acceptance Not Required for Having Copies. > You are not required to accept this License in order to receive or run a copy > of the Program. So the user can stop reading after that clause? The user could argue to have never agreed to the license (nor by extension its liability waivers in section 7). Without an agreement however that comes with a limitation/disclaimer of warranty, how would there be legally binding warranty limitation/disclaimer? In the absence of an agreement it follows that the defaults apply. And the default by law comes with implied warranty. The user could argue to have assumed it's was implied it's like freeware (common closed source, nonfree software that is free in price), without terms of service, therefore only provisions by law apply, and therefore limitation/disclaimer of warranty legally are non-binding? GPLv3 vs proprietary software EULAs: - GPLv3: a license; acceptance not required for running the program. - EULAs of proprietary software: an agreement where acceptance is required, using most times clickwrap, so any disclaimers are likely legally binding. Other Libre Software licenses such as MIT do not contain such a "You are not required to accept" clause. So I wonder why GPL invented it? Kind regards, Patrick [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/enforcing-gpl.en.html _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
