It was a valiant last stand but the Linux Foundation and Microsoft's
efforts to delay the American Law Institute's (ALI) ruling on software warranties have failed.
The two took the unusual step of joining forces at the last minute to try and thwart a clause in the ALI's Principles of the Law of Software Contracts - an influential legal guide handed out to US judges and other legal professionals. The clause basically states that the buyer has a de facto warranty that any commercial software they buy will work perfectly.
"The ALI adopted the Principles in a vote on May 19th," wrote Horacio Gutierrez, corporate vice president and deputy general counsel of intellectual property and licensing at Microsoft, in a company blog.
"We are disappointed that the ALI did not allow for additional input, and will continue to work with the Linux Foundation and others across the software industry to ensure that any application of the principles does not adversely impact software developers, the software industry or consumers."
How the two respond to this is going to prove very interesting. Both sides aren't keen on the definition.
Microsoft is, for obvious reasons, not wild about the prospect of a flood of legal cases under the new guidelines. It's impossible for any entity to write a perfect operating system with no flaws, particularly if you're supporting a myriad of older products, standards and security protocols.
If you're Linux then the case is more down to legal fees. While the guidance appears to exempt free software it's such a legal gray area, and an expensive worry for new firms. Is selling services for your software counted as free for example? Open source companies have reason to fear such murky waters in court.
Today's confirmation looks to be a classic case of the law trailing after reality. The judiciary is seldom trained in real world problems,particularly in IT, and the experts that examine cases are paid for by defence and prosecution services and often exaggerate for effect.
In a perfect world independent counsel would be taken from the best experts in the field to advise how to deal with legal minefields like this. Maybe the team behind the minesweepers doesn't have the best interests of their clients at heart?
We can only hope that the two sides see that their enemy's enemy is their friend.
21 May 2009
