"NO WARRANTY" blah blah blah [LWN.net]

"NO WARRANTY" blah blah blah

Posted Apr 10, 2005 16:41 UTC (Sun) by jstAusr (guest, #27224)
In reply to: Protect Your Source Code: Obfuscation 101 (O'ReillyNet) by NAR
Parent article: Protect Your Source Code: Obfuscation 101 (O'ReillyNet)

> I work for a company that produces closed-source software without the
> usual "NO WARRANTY" text in the license (unlike the vast majority of
> open source software). It means that we need to support our own code
> for years.

That may be true in a legal sense. The reality is that alot of software licensed under free (libre) terms is supported longer and better than software licensed under closed terms. Also, freely licensed software can be supported and maintained by anyone, so the "company" isn't needed to keep the software in a workable state.

So BS to you as well :).

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"NO WARRANTY" blah blah blah

Posted Apr 10, 2005 21:24 UTC (Sun) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

The reality is that alot of software licensed under free (libre) terms is supported longer and better than software licensed under closed terms. Also, freely licensed software can be supported and maintained by anyone

It has nothing to do with my original comment (i.e. obfuscated code and opennes of source are orthogonal), but it's also a part truth. Anyone can support and maintain free software who has the necessary resources. Which is quite a strong restriction. I seem to remember the time when the Star Office and the Netscape Communicator source was dumped on the free software community - it took a while (not just in time, but in money too) to produce something useful.

Bye,NAR

"NO WARRANTY" blah blah blah

Posted Apr 11, 2005 2:32 UTC (Mon) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link]

The "No warranty" clause is also very common in closed source. Have you ever looked at the Microsoft licensing agreement?
I just installed mapping software for my GPS (closed source, of course), and the producer (Garmin) has the same limitations of warranties etc. that you find in open source.
So, that's not quite what distinguishes open and close source.

I agree with your assessment, though, that obfuscating code makes it harder to provide support. That's why obfuscation can nowadays be done on a more or less automated basis, during the compilation process. An example is the product called dotfuscator, which, as far as I understand it, works on the bytecode level (MSIL, as the .Net bytecode is called.)