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UCITA drafters don't go far enough for Red Hat (Register)
The Register
reports on
the reaction of Red Hat lawyer Carol Kunze to recent changes to the UCITA.
"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."
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UCITA drafters don't go far enough for Red Hat (Register) Posted Aug 9, 2002 8:14 UTC (Fri) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link] IMO the revised bill is not perfect, but I think you will all agree that it is a damn sight better than the original draft.I can see where Red Hat are coming from - as they provide open-source software with local "value added" content at cost, they would still be liable under the revised bill. I'm not into drafting bills in "legaleze", but surely all that's needed is to change the wording so that UCITA exempts software for which the _full_ source code is effectively placed in the public domain by being made available to anyone, anywhere, free of cost except for a fair & reasonable charge for media, shipping etc. if applicable. This change would allow Red Hat to continue to operate their current business model without becoming liable for damages resulting from flaws in software they were not directly responsible for writing. They would still be liable for flaws attributable to changes made by themselves, or documentation supplied with boxed sets, but penalties could only be extracted by those who have bought the retail product - not those who have availed themselves of free downloads. Meanwhile commercial software vendors would become (for the first time) fully liable to their customers for any flaws in closed-source software. This seems entirely fair to me. Brian Beesley
UCITA drafters don't go far enough for Red Hat (Register) Posted Aug 9, 2002 9:53 UTC (Fri) by sergiori (guest, #3180) [Link] First of all in regards to Brians post, the portion of open source public domain in linux distribution is very small about 1% of the software so his comments mostly do not apply, most of it is open source GLP software which is different than open source public domain.Anyway the UCITA needs to be killed, since it will hurt badly the open software industry, not only Red Hat. If you get something for free you should not hurt the person that is being nice it is simply unethical. Red Hat and others have been very nice to the community for providing great linux distributions. Why should it be acceptable to have laws which only hurt the open software industry. It is unresonable to except the software to be bug free, I have personally never seen an OS bug free, there are millions lines of codes the kernel alone, add to that the software that makes up the distribution. I tried to read the UCITA law once and it is very confusing, there are many clauses, it is very long, and I do not see in any way whatsoever how this can be of any help for the open software industry. Linux is by far better than windows, and very stable, but it is not bug free, if you wait for a bug free OS to exist, you may not ever get to see that OS. In recent history the first attack on open source software was the DMCA, now because of the DMCA you can not legally in USA watch a DVD rom you legally purchased using linux, this is bull shit, if you buy a DVD rom you should legally be able to view in your platform of choice, but due to the DMCA this is not the case, and now we have UCITA, this is clearly not good. You have to ask yourself the question what good has UCITA done for you, and what good has Red Hat done for you ?
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