[opensource-dev] A note on preserving "NO WARRANTY" for SL TPV developers

[David M Chess]

Jonathan Irvin <djfoxyslpr at gmail.com>:

> Keep in mind, it's not LL that's saying it, it is their lawyers.  Like I 
said, LL is protecting their assets.  The best way for them to do that is 
by hiring good lawyers who can cover all the bases.

This is wrong enough that I can't resist responding.   :)

The TPVP isn't signed "some lawyers who also happen to work for Linden 
Lab".  It is official LL policy, and published as such. 

If the question is whether people should hold individual Linden employees 
personally responsible for it, yeah probably not.  But the Lab as a whole 
has made the collective decision to make this Lab policy. 

"The lawyers made us say it" might be a good excuse if used by an 
individual employee, but it's not something that the Lab as a whole can 
say, or that it makes any sense for anyone else to say on their behalf.

Legal departments, even good ones, have a tendency to give advice 
calculated to minimize the probability of harm occurring -in the form of 
lawsuits-; that's basically their job.  It's up to the business managers 
that the legal department advises to weigh the dangers of that sort of 
harm against the dangers of other sorts of harm (like a reduced TPV 
ecosystem, annoyed or confused or alienated users, etc).

There are good reasons that the head of the legal department in a company 
is seldom the CEO. 

In this particular case, if the user and TPV developer communities can, 
rationally and responsibly, make the Lab aware of negative aspects of the 
current TPVP wording that might outweigh the reasons the wording was 
drafted that way in the first place, I'm sure the wording can be changed, 
whatever some particular employee may have send in the interwebs...

Dave Chess / Dale Innis

[All statements  herein represent my own opinions (at most), and are not 
official or unofficial statements of anyone else, including for example 
and without restriction my employer, IBM, the United States Government, 
the International Red Cross, General Motors, General Electric, the 
International Bank of Credit and Commerce, Nabisco, Acme Pet Supplies, 
Mattel, AIG, the United States Postal Service, McDonald?s, Linden 
Research, the Supreme Council 33° of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, the United 
Nations Security Council, Wham-O, and Britney Spears.]


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