[FYI] UCITA drafters don't go far enough for Red Hat

["Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26564.html

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UCITA drafters don't go far enough for Red Hat  

By Grant Gross  

Posted: 07/08/2002 at 13:03 GMT  

The group that drafted the controversial UCITA legislation has 
approved a handful of changes designed to address concerns raised by 
Open Source advocates, but those changes may not go far enough to win 
the approval of Red Hat's lawyer.  

The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws 
approved several changes to its Uniform Computer Information 
Transactions Act, which is supposed to be a model for state 
legislatures to consider.  

Among the changes approved by the NCCUSL last week were some that 
addressed concerns voiced by the Open Source and Free Software 
communities:  

A state's consumer protection law now trumps UCITA. Software contract 
terms that prohibit criticism of that product are unenforceable. A 
software contract may not prohibit reverse engineering that is done 
for the purposes of making a piece of software work with other 
software. Open Source software is exempt from UCITA when that 
software is not sold for a profit.  

But that last change doesn't go far enough, says Carol Kunze, a 
lawyer working for Red Hat on UCITA issues. Before the commission's 
meeting, Kunze wrote a letter asking the group to kill UCITA 
altogether. Red Hat and other Open Source companies have long 
objected to UCITA's requirement that Open Source software provide 
warranties to customers. Kunze says the new changes stop short of 
exempting Open Source software a customer has purchased from carrying 
a warranty. And software distributed for free would still be required 
under UCITA to carry a warranty if there's a charge for installation 
services or an accompanying maintenance contract.  

The bottom line, says Kunze, is that any Open Source programmers 
trying to make money from their software would have to carry up-front 
warranty disclaimers saying there are no implied warranties beyond 
those that are granted, like proprietary companies do in their click-
wrap agreements. "Open Source/Free Software would have to adopt the 
proprietary practice of having an upfront agreement with the user, 
something that many Open Source/Free Software programmers don't want 
to do, if only to disclaim the implied warranties," Kunze says.  

[...]

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