The sentence "This file is offered as-is, without warranty of any kind."
was added to maintain.texi in 2009[1]. I assume this sentence was due to
advice from FSF legal. We should definitely add it.
I don't know where I got the wording in my 2005 Gnulib commit[2]. Maybe
from your earlier Gnulib changes?
The phrase "in any medium without royalty" has been present in
maintain.texi since the almost-all-permissive license was added on
2002[3], presumably also with advice from FSF legal. The phrase's intent
is to make it clear that the FSF grants permissions that might not
otherwise be obvious to a careful (perhaps pedantic?) lawyer.
On 2024-10-17 08:51, Bruno Haible via Gnulib discussion list wrote:
* It does not raise questions about what "without royalty" means.
If, say, Red Hat includes such a file in a product that they sell,
are the "royalties" the money that Red Hat's customer pays to Red Hat,
or the money that Red Hat pays to the FSF?
There's no legal ambiguity there. Red Hat does not charge royalties
(i.e., payments for ongoing use of intellectual property) for use of
GPLed software licensed from the FSF. That would be a violation of the
GPL. In practice nobody outside of large organizations will care about
the "without royalty" phrase, and these organizations have easy access
to legal advice that will say the phrase has its obvious meaning.
* "in any medium" was probably worth mentioning in the 1980ies. But by
now, all judges and courts should understand
This may be a bit optimistic. This phrase comes from US legal disputes
about whether permission extends to just the medium the original copy
was distributed on, or other media. This issue is still relevant in the
US and there are even subissues within the issue.
Although it's no big deal whether "in any medium without royalty" is
present, it's better to use maintain.texi's current wording. If Gnulib
uses a different wording, it might reasonably be construed that the
intent for Gnulib differs from the intent in maintain.texi; but we want
to express the same intent.
[1]:
https://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/gnustandards/gnustandards/maintain.texi?r1=1.172&r2=1.173
[2]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2005-01/msg00074.html
[3]:
https://cvs.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/gnustandards/gnustandards/maintain.texi?r1=1.86&r2=1.87
