Hi everyone, Thank you for all the feedback. I've read all of it but I've a lot of things going on this week so I'll give a summary reply here to the things that stood out from the thread:
- The goal of adding some legalese is the longevity and stability of the project. Even if what we do is generally "free" and "under the radar", we're increasingly providing a core service to the internet community. - The main "target" of the terms of service is the context of a device/appliance vendor using the NTP Pool. - A primary goal is to explain (again) that the service is provided by volunteers and with no warranties. *We* all know that and a moderately thoughtful reader will understand that from the website, wikipedia etc but I don't think there can be too many ways to explain that to everybody else. - Secondarily it's to have another place than use.html to explain some stupid things not to do. I'm spending a good deal of time working with vendors to not make them do dumb things -- checking time too often or checking time at midnight, etc. If you have a router that uses time for access control limits with a configuration in 5 minute increments, does it matter if the device time is a few seconds off? - Which jurisdiction would be more reasonable than California? I agree it sucks that it can't be "internet community law", but at the point someone is suing the project it's not going to be on a mailing list. The servers are here, I am here and the Network Time Foundation is here (the NTF might be a future home for the project). There hasn't been a lawsuit and I don't see any reasonable basis for one, but every now and then I get an angry email from someone who configured their time zones wrong and missed a meeting and they're upset with me now because "time.windows.com gave them the wrong time". If I understand it all correctly: If someone is nutty enough to file something like that in court (in say Texas) I can't tell the court to take it up on the mailing list, but I can tell them to move it to California. - I think all the server operators fall in under "agents" or something in the terminology, but I'll have to check with the lawyer. - A lawyer[1] did create the terms (with my input) and a couple of other legal documents that we will get to later. It's been on my todo (and in progress) for a long time. It's way way way down on my list of things I look forward to doing when I take time to work on the project here. Thank you all for your comments! Ask [1] http://fortpoint.me/clients/ -- Ask Bjørn Hansen, http://askask.com/ _______________________________________________ pool mailing list [email protected] http://lists.ntp.org/listinfo/pool
