FITUG e.V.
Förderverein Informationstechnik und Gesellschaft
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/26564.html
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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