Re: [school-discuss] Re: Disclaimer language for The Open CD

[Michael Dean <michaelldean@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> on Mon, Apr 04, 2005 at 09:50:28AM -0400, Aaron Tyo-Dickerson (aaron@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
>  
>
> > A local school district here in rural Upstate New York is interested in 
> > distributing copies of The Open CD to students and community members, 
> > but is concerned about "liability" issues. While I personally think that 
> > free, open-source software is a terrific thing and understand the 
> > implied "take it as it is" terms of the GPL and other legalese, I 
> > understand the district's desire to head off any a) demands for "service 
> > and support" and b) complaints that "that free stuff you gave me crashed 
> > my computer". They would like a concise, easy to understand (by lay 
> > users) disclaimer for the CDs that they would be distributing.
> >
> > I have checked The Open CD's website (http://www.theopencd.org) and 
> > cannot find any language there that would seem to fit the bill, but have 
> > thought that rather than invent a blurb of my own, I might appeal to 
> > members of this list who have either done this sort of thing already or 
> > else might know where to steer me for this. Thanks very much for any 
> > responses that can shared on this!
> > :-)
> >    
I think the real issue is the pattern of schools obtaining after sale 
support and service under annual contracts for what has been a 
proprietary world.  In a framework of total systems initiation, from the 
server down, and after school administrators have learned the radically 
different support style of open source, and within the confines of a 
support contract, where a competent school vendor with a support 
contract is willing to say "well, openoffice is not going to crash your 
computer, the Sun license is appropriate and we will be willing to train 
you on Openoffice, then acceptance will be easy.  This is what I mean by 
goal-driven systems.  I think any attempt of ad hoc adaptation of 
software within a school system would be suspect and probably against 
their security policies..

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