Hi, The all-permissive copyright + license notice that we currently use is:
dnl Copyright (C) YEARS Free Software Foundation, Inc.
dnl This file is free software; the Free Software Foundation
dnl gives unlimited permission to copy and/or distribute it,
dnl with or without modifications, as long as this notice is preserved.
since 2005 [1].
Meanwhile, in 2020, John Darrington suggested to me to use a different
all-permissive license notice [2], that has the additional sentence
This file is offered as-is, without any warranty.
Should we use or not use this additional sentence?
I am not a lawyer, but when I ask the prior knowledge summarization engine,
it strongly recommends using it. See the attached "conversation".
I would propose to add this additional sentence to etc/license-notices/unlimited
and to m4/*.m4, because
- that recommendation sounds reasonable (does not look like a hallucination),
- often a file from gnulib gets copied into another package, perhaps without
a COPYING or LICENSE file that disclaims warranties,
- the FSF is under repeated attack in the last 5 years, and I wouldn't want
it to be attacked from the angle of a liability lawsuit regarding our code.
diff --git a/m4/stdlib_h.m4 b/m4/stdlib_h.m4
index 5d9b3017c4..68d98427b5 100644
--- a/m4/stdlib_h.m4
+++ b/m4/stdlib_h.m4
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@
dnl This file is free software; the Free Software Foundation
dnl gives unlimited permission to copy and/or distribute it,
dnl with or without modifications, as long as this notice is preserved.
+dnl This file is offered as-is, without any warranty.
AC_DEFUN_ONCE([gl_STDLIB_H],
[
Opinions? Objections?
Bruno
[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2005-01/msg00074.html
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gettext/2020-01/msg00004.html
warranty-disclaimers.odt
Description: application/vnd.oasis.opendocument.text
