Re: [OpenWrt-Devel] Disclaimer for user documentation?
There are few documentation specific licenses with disclaimers, you might consider those: 1. CC license Documentation/books/images are often published under some variant of Creative Commons license. For example Wikipedia uses CreativeCommons Attribution - ShareAlike variant https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode The disclaimer there reads (probably needs to be adjusted for a OpenWRT wiki to clarify terms used): Section 5 – Disclaimer of Warranties and Limitation of Liability. Unless otherwise separately undertaken by the Licensor, to the extent possible, the Licensor offers the Licensed Material as-is and as-available, and makes no representations or warranties of any kind concerning the Licensed Material, whether express, implied, statutory, or other. This includes, without limitation, warranties of title, merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, absence of latent or other defects, accuracy, or the presence or absence of errors, whether or not known or discoverable. Where disclaimers of warranties are not allowed in full or in part, this disclaimer may not apply to You. To the extent possible, in no event will the Licensor be liable to You on any legal theory (including, without limitation, negligence) or otherwise for any direct, special, indirect, incidental, consequential, punitive, exemplary, or other losses, costs, expenses, or damages arising out of this Public License or use of the Licensed Material, even if the Licensor has been advised of the possibility of such losses, costs, expenses, or damages. Where a limitation of liability is not allowed in full or in part, this limitation may not apply to You. The disclaimer of warranties and limitation of liability provided above shall be interpreted in a manner that, to the extent possible, most closely approximates an absolute disclaimer and waiver of all liability. 2. FreeBSD documentation license The FreeBSD documentation license - simpler to digest, do not about quality from lawyer point of view: https://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-doc-license.html THIS DOCUMENTATION IS PROVIDED BY THE FREEBSD DOCUMENTATION PROJECT "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE FREEBSD DOCUMENTATION PROJECT BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENTATION, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. Maksym ___ openwrt-devel mailing list openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
Re: [OpenWrt-Devel] Disclaimer for user documentation?
Hi, maybe it would make sense to copy one of the standard boilerplate liability remarks from one of the OSS licenses and put that as generic statement into the wiki footer. Example from Apache 2.0: "Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied." or MIT (sorry for the all-caps, I lazily copy-pasted): "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE." or GPL 3: "THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW. EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND/OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM “AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION. IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER, OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MODIFIES AND/OR CONVEYS THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE, BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, INCLUDING ANY GENERAL, SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDERED INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY YOU OR THIRD PARTIES OR A FAILURE OF THE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTHER PROGRAMS), EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES." My personal approach would be picking one of these, swapping "software" with "documentation" and put that in fine print into the wiki footer, somewhere next to the license remark. Having this is yellow warning banner on top of every documentation article seems like overkill to me and would like detract users from the actual content of the documentation. My 2cents, Jo ___ openwrt-devel mailing list openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
Re: [OpenWrt-Devel] Disclaimer for user documentation?
On 29/07/2018 19:53, Sebastian Kemper wrote: On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 02:36:20PM +0200, Alberto Bursi wrote: In the meantime you can place any disclaimer you want in the warning box at the top of your article, and be covered by that. A good starting point is copy-pasting LineageOS's https://lineageos.org/legal/ I'll not put up a guide right now as the liability situation is uncertain. I'll just provide basic infos about some of the packages. Kind regards, Seb Let me clarify as it seems I didn't get my point through: there is no legal office in OpenWrt so this discussion might never go beyond this chat between me and you and a few other guys that aren't lawyers. If you really want to both post the article and be sure you aren't held liable for user error, I would recommend to look up what would disclaim all liability in your country and just place a banner with that text in the article (which afaik should be the same as LineageOS's for EU and USA, all disclaimers I've seen around look the same) instead of waiting indefinitely for some definitive answer that isn't likely to come. Any edit to the wiki is logged and can be rolled back, maintainers are notified of any edit, if we see someone making shenanigans with the articles we revert the page to its previous state pretty quickly. So the banner you place won't disappear. What I was wondering in my answer (and why I CC other maintainers) is what would happen for most of the documentation in the wiki that lacks such disclaimers. Because you know, failure to secure basic stuff like wifi or firewall or VPN will cause massive issues too, and we may or may not have liability disclaimers in place for that. -Alberto ___ openwrt-devel mailing list openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
Re: [OpenWrt-Devel] Disclaimer for user documentation?
On Sat, Jul 28, 2018 at 02:36:20PM +0200, Alberto Bursi wrote: > In other articles where user error might cause issues we placed a banner > on top with a warning, like this > https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wan/smartphone.usb.tethering Hello Alberto, Thank you for your input. I put up a warning like that now. > I personally don't think people writing the articles can be blamed > unless the guide they wrote is actually wrong. If users screw up that's > their own responsibility. I agree. But lets say for the sake of argument that a company has an admin who uses your guide to configure his telephony system. And then somebody takes advantage of some configuration issue in your guide and commits toll fraud. Lets say for a couple thousand . The provider will get their money from the company. And the company goes to the admin who then points to your article. Would the company perhaps consider suing you, the author of the guide? > But I don't know the legal side of things, can someone actually sue > OpenWrt or try to go after the contributors if such things happen? Interesting questions. The answers may also be different depending on your location. > If others agree (I'm CCing this mail to other wiki maintainers) I can > add a new "Legal" page with link on the menu on the left where such > disclaimers can be placed. I think a general disclaim-all DISCLAIMER would be handy. > In the meantime you can place any disclaimer you want in the warning box > at the top of your article, and be covered by that. A good starting > point is copy-pasting LineageOS's https://lineageos.org/legal/ I'll not put up a guide right now as the liability situation is uncertain. I'll just provide basic infos about some of the packages. Kind regards, Seb ___ openwrt-devel mailing list openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
Re: [OpenWrt-Devel] Disclaimer for user documentation?
On 28/07/2018 13:59, Sebastian Kemper wrote: Hi all, I'm adding a page about FreeSWITCH to the OpenWrt user documentation. I would like to add a guide on setting up a configuration to use freeswitch with Ekiga, along the lines of a testing ground for people to use and play around with before they take on other endeavors. But I'm a bit reluctant to do it because if somebody sets up SIP connections wrongly it can cost them money (PBX getting hacked etc.). I don't want any blame for that. Can there maybe be a general disclaimer that disclaims any liability that users adding documentation can link to? I've searched if something like this exists already but didn't find anything. Kind regards, Seb ___ openwrt-devel mailing list openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel In other articles where user error might cause issues we placed a banner on top with a warning, like this https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/network/wan/smartphone.usb.tethering I personally don't think people writing the articles can be blamed unless the guide they wrote is actually wrong. If users screw up that's their own responsibility. But I don't know the legal side of things, can someone actually sue OpenWrt or try to go after the contributors if such things happen? If others agree (I'm CCing this mail to other wiki maintainers) I can add a new "Legal" page with link on the menu on the left where such disclaimers can be placed. In the meantime you can place any disclaimer you want in the warning box at the top of your article, and be covered by that. A good starting point is copy-pasting LineageOS's https://lineageos.org/legal/ -Alberto ___ openwrt-devel mailing list openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
[OpenWrt-Devel] Disclaimer for user documentation?
Hi all, I'm adding a page about FreeSWITCH to the OpenWrt user documentation. I would like to add a guide on setting up a configuration to use freeswitch with Ekiga, along the lines of a testing ground for people to use and play around with before they take on other endeavors. But I'm a bit reluctant to do it because if somebody sets up SIP connections wrongly it can cost them money (PBX getting hacked etc.). I don't want any blame for that. Can there maybe be a general disclaimer that disclaims any liability that users adding documentation can link to? I've searched if something like this exists already but didn't find anything. Kind regards, Seb ___ openwrt-devel mailing list openwrt-devel@lists.openwrt.org https://lists.openwrt.org/mailman/listinfo/openwrt-devel
