Provided "as is", without warranty of any kind June 14, 2021 on Drew DeVault's blog

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

The BSD licenses, GPL family of licenses, Apache 2.0, Mozilla Public License, and likely any other license you’d care to name, have similar clauses of their own. It’s worth taking a moment to consider the implications of this statement and what it says about the social aspects of free and open source software.

Many people who rely on free and open source software feel entitled to some degree of workitude or support from the developers, or think that the developers have a responsibility to provide good maintenance, or any maintenance at all, for their work. This is simply not true. All free and open source software disclaims all responsibility for your use of them for any purpose, often in all capital letters.

Some maintainers will allow you to negotiate additional terms with them, for example through the sale of a support contract, for which you may receive such a guarantee. If you have not made such an agreement with your maintainers, they have no responsibility to provide you with any support or assurance of quality. That means that they do not have to solve your bug reports or answer your questions. They do not have to review and apply your patch. They do not have to write documentation. They do not have to port it to your favorite platform. You are not entitled to the blood, sweat, and tears of the maintainers of the free & open source software you use.

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