[Fsf-friends] No warranty is the best warranty for free software

[Ramanraj K]

Chandrashekhar Mullaparthi wrote:

>On 23/12/03 12:10 pm, "Annamalai Gurusami"
><annamalai.gurusami@email.masconit.com> wrote:
>
>>Chandrashekhar Mullaparthi <chandrashekhar.mullaparthi@t-mobile.co.uk> writes:
>>    
>>
>>>Well, I dont agree with the analogy. A book is for learning about something.
>>>Usually, software is a tool/utility.
>>>
>>>Like Ramanraj said in a message previously, if a book is crap, the author
>>>wont sell anymore and that is the end of his/her career as an author. The
>>>same cant be said of big corporations which make crap commercial software.
>>>      
>>>
>>The same does apply to _big_ corporations.  If their software is not
>>useful, then it is not going to sell.
>>    
>>
>Really? What about Microsoft? Exception? I think it's more the norm than the
>exception. And, the point is not whether a paticular piece of software is
>useful. The point is what happens when it breaks. That's where warranties
>come in.
>
>Chandru
>
>  
>
In the free software community, when software breaks, we can report the 
bug to the developers, and a patch is normally made available for the 
whole community, and a more robust code evolves.

As a standard measure, most System Administrators would take back ups of 
important data, and the loss if any, would be only for the period from 
the last back up.  If backups are made every day, one can minimise the 
damage very considerably.

No warranty clause in the GPL actually promotes the evolution of robust 
code for the whole community.  If a person x gives warranty to user y, 
then the knowledge about the bug and its solution would remain only 
between x and y alone, and the rest of the community may suffer because 
of this.  It would be best not to give any warranty at all, and if a bug 
comes up, to fix it either through the developers who maintain the 
source or anybody else willing to help, for free or for a fee, and make 
it public and open to all.  It therefore looks like no warranty is the 
best warranty for free software!

So far as our non-free friends are concerned, the warranty itself lends 
to several mischiefs.  RMS spoke as follows at MIT, Chrompet, Chennai, 
in a speech (that was transcripted by Suraj), as follows:

Because one of the consequences of Free Software is that there is
a free market for all kinds of supports and services, and the result is
you can expect better support and service for free software. For a
proprietary program, support is a monopoly. Because only the company
that owns the program in general can give you any support - except for
the most superficial kinds. So the result they don't have to care and
they know it. They'll tell you: "Pay us and we'll let you report a bug".
And if you do that they'll tell you, "In six months there will be an
upgrade. Buy the upgrade and you'll see if we've fixed this bug and
you'll see what new bugs we gave you"  [Laughter] . 
..With a proprietary program all you can do is put blind faith in the 
developers and often they don't deserve it.