Re: software suits, was Re: Long names are doom ?

["Marin David Condic" <marin.condic.auntie.spam@pacemicro.com>]

Exactly! When you go to buy a house or a used car labeled "as is", a court
would likely rule that you had reasonable opportunity to inspect the house
or car and look for flaws & hence could have and should have known what you
were buying. (BTW: This also doesn't hold up across the board - there are
exceptions - talk to a relator about "disclosure" and how that still may not
get you out of all troubles!)

When you buy a piece of software at CompUSA, all you can do there is read
the stuff on the outside of the box - and maybe the user's manuals if you
bust open the box (and doing so does not constitute acceptance.) You cannot
inspect the actual product until you put it on your machine and go past the
"I Accept" button. That "contract" doesn't even promise that the software
inside will even start up and execute *at*all*. It could be an .EXE full of
random zeros and ones and you have no way of knowing that until after you go
past the "I Accept". Hence, you can't really know what you are agreeing to
and no contract takes place.

Naturally, no reputable firm would try to get money out of you for a file
full of random zeros and ones - most would make a good faith effort to
insure their product at least started up and got past the splash screan.
Naturally, they're trying to avoid having someone hold them accountable for
every conceivable little bug or glitch and insist that they fix it at
potentially huge expense. They are also trying to avoid piracy. All of that
is fair, but I still don't think that this should excuse a manufacturer of
software from putting out really buggy crap when it is possible to make
substantially more reliable software. I'd be satisfied if the warranty would
list a set of functions and promise that those functions will work without
flaws with the sole remedy being a refund of my money when I return the
product. (This naturally gets difficult when the flaws may lie beneath your
software in the OS or network or elsewhere... but still, it would be some
sort of progress! Stipulating that the software can pass some set of tests
without failure would be progress. Almost anything would be better than the
"We promise you absolutely nothing!" claim of most licenses.)

MDC
--
Marin David Condic
Senior Software Engineer
Pace Micro Technology Americas    www.pacemicro.com
Enabling the digital revolution
e-Mail:    marin.condic@pacemicro.com
Web:      http://www.mcondic.com/


"Wes Groleau" <wwgrol@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com> wrote in message
news:3B267A3D.1B2F2750@ftw.rsc.raytheon.com...
> Well, I am not saying this would hold up in court in ANY country,
> but I HAVE SEEN packages which actually said, "If you do not agree
> to the terms of the license inside this package, then do not open
> the package."
>
> !!!!
>
> --
> Wes Groleau
> http://freepages.rootsweb.com/~wgroleau