From 6894fbe1bde8ec1a4989417a2b68b4d84134ee20 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: simon Date: Sat, 1 Oct 2005 11:40:26 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] A swathe of new FAQ questions, along the general theme of `will you sign something for us / give us assurances / give us indemnity'. git-svn-id: svn://svn.tartarus.org/sgt/putty@6365 cda61777-01e9-0310-a592-d414129be87e --- doc/faq.but | 166 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 166 insertions(+) diff --git a/doc/faq.but b/doc/faq.but index 5b1b8549..9df4508e 100644 --- a/doc/faq.but +++ b/doc/faq.but @@ -1223,6 +1223,172 @@ particular environment. If your users mail us directly, we won't be able to give them very much help about things specific to your own setup. +\S{faq-indemnity}{Question} Can you sign an agreement indemnifying +us against security problems in PuTTY? + +No! + +A vendor of physical security products (e.g. locks) might plausibly +be willing to accept financial liability for a product that failed +to perform as advertised and resulted in damage (e.g. valuables +being stolen). The reason they can afford to do this is because they +sell a \e{lot} of units, and only a small proportion of them will +fail; so they can meet their financial liability out of the income +from all the rest of their sales, and still have enough left over to +make a profit. Financial liability is intrinsically linked to +selling your product for money. + +There are two reasons why PuTTY is not analogous to a physical lock +in this context. One is that software products don't exhibit random +variation: \e{if} PuTTY has a security hole (which does happen, +although we do our utmost to prevent it and to respond quickly when +it does), every copy of PuTTY will have the same hole, so it's +likely to affect all the users at the same time. So even if our +users were all paying us to use PuTTY, we wouldn't be able to +\e{simultaneously} pay every affected user compensation in excess of +the amount they had paid us in the first place. It just wouldn't +work. + +The second, much more important, reason is that PuTTY users +\e{don't} pay us. The PuTTY team does not have an income; it's a +volunteer effort composed of people spending their spare time to try +to write useful software. We aren't even a company or any kind of +legally recognised organisation. We're just a bunch of people who +happen to do some stuff in our spare time. + +Therefore, to ask us to assume financial liability is to ask us to +assume a risk of having to pay it out of our own \e{personal} +pockets: out of the same budget from which we buy food and clothes +and pay our rent. That's more than we're willing to give. We're +already giving a lot of our spare \e{time} to developing software +for free; if we had to pay our own \e{money} to do it as well, we'd +start to wonder why we were bothering. + +Free software fundamentally does not work on the basis of financial +guarantees. Your guarantee of the software functioning correctly is +simply that you have the source code and can check it before you use +it. If you want to be sure there aren't any security holes, do a +security audit of the PuTTY code, or hire a security engineer if you +don't have the necessary skills yourself: instead of trying to +ensure you can get compensation in the event of a disaster, try to +ensure there isn't a disaster in the first place. + +If you \e{really} want financial security, see if you can find a +security engineer who will take financial responsibility for the +correctness of their review. (This might be less likely to suffer +from the everything-failing-at-once problem mentioned above, because +such an engineer would probably be reviewing a lot of \e{different} +products which would tend to fail independently.) Failing that, see +if you can persuade an insurance company to insure you against +security incidents, and if the insurer demands it as a condition +then get our code reviewed by a security engineer they're happy +with. + +\S{faq-permission-form}{Question} Can you sign this form granting us +permission to use/distribute PuTTY? + +If your form contains any clause along the lines of \q{the +undersigned represents and warrants}, we're not going to sign it. +This is particularly true if it asks us to warrant that PuTTY is +secure; see \k{faq-indemnity} for more discussion of this. But it +doesn't really matter what we're supposed to be warranting: even if +it's something we already believe is true, such as that we don't +infringe any third-party copyright, we will not sign a document +accepting any legal or financial liability. This is simply because +the PuTTY development project has no income out of which to satisfy +that liability, or pay legal costs, should it become necessary. We +cannot afford to be sued. We are assuring you that \e{we have done +our best}; if that isn't good enough for you, tough. + +The existing PuTTY licence document already gives you permission to +use or distribute PuTTY in pretty much any way which does not +involve pretending you wrote it or suing us if it goes wrong. We +think that really ought to be enough for anybody. + +See also \k{faq-permission-general} for another reason why we don't +want to do this sort of thing. + +\S{faq-permission-future}{Question} Can you write us a formal notice +of permission to use PuTTY? + +We could, in principle, but it isn't clear what use it would be. If +you think there's a serious chance of one of the PuTTY copyright +holders suing you (which we don't!), you would presumably want a +signed notice from \e{all} of them; and we couldn't provide that +even if we wanted to, because many of the copyright holders are +people who contributed some code in the past and with whom we +subsequently lost contact. Therefore the best we would be able to do +\e{even in theory} would be to have the core development team sign +the document, which wouldn't guarantee you that some other copyright +holder might not sue. + +See also \k{faq-permission-general} for another reason why we don't +want to do this sort of thing. + +\S{faq-permission-general}{Question} Can you sign \e{anything} for +us? + +Not unless there's an incredibly good reason. + +We are generally unwilling to set a precedent that involves us +having to enter into individual agreements with PuTTY users. We +estimate that we have literally \e{millions} of users, and we +absolutely would not have time to go round signing specific +agreements with every one of them. So if you want us to sign +something specific for you, you might usefully stop to consider +whether there's anything special that distinguishes you from 999,999 +other users, and therefore any reason we should be willing to sign +something for you without it setting such a precedent. + +If your company policy requires you to have an individual agreement +with the supplier of any software you use, then your company policy +is simply not well suited to using popular free software, and we +urge you to consider this as a flaw in your policy. + +\S{faq-permission-assurance}{Question} If you won't sign anything, +can you give us some sort of assurance that you won't make PuTTY +closed-source in future? + +Yes and no. + +If what you want is an assurance that some \e{current version} of +PuTTY which you've already downloaded will remain free, then you +already have that assurance: it's called the PuTTY Licence. It +grants you permission to use, distribute and copy the software to +which it applies; once we've granted that permission (which we +have), we can't just revoke it. + +On the other hand, if you want an assurance that \e{future} versions +of PuTTY won't be closed-source, that's more difficult. We could in +principle sign a document stating that we would never release a +closed-source PuTTY, but that wouldn't assure you that we \e{would} +keep releasing \e{open}-source PuTTYs: we would still have the +option of ceasing to develop PuTTY at all, which would surely be +even worse for you than making it closed-source! (And we almost +certainly wouldn't \e{want} to sign a document guaranteeing that we +would actually continue to do development work on PuTTY; we +certainly wouldn't sign it for free. Documents like that are called +contracts of employment, and are generally not signed except in +return for a sizeable salary.) + +If we \e{were} to stop developing PuTTY, or to decide to make all +future releases closed-source, then you would still be free to copy +the last open release in accordance with the current licence, and in +particular you could start your own fork of the project from that +release. If this happened, I confidently predict that \e{somebody} +would do that, and that some kind of a free PuTTY would continue to +be developed. There's already precedent for that sort of thing +happening in free software. We can't guarantee that somebody +\e{other than you} would do it, of course; you might have to do it +yourself. But we can assure you that there would be nothing +\e{preventing} anyone from continuing free development if we +stopped. + +(Finally, we can also confidently predict that if we made PuTTY +closed-source and someone made an open-source fork, most people +would switch to the latter. Therefore, it would be pretty stupid of +us to try it.) + \H{faq-misc} Miscellaneous questions \S{faq-openssh}{Question} Is PuTTY a port of \i{OpenSSH}, or based on -- 2.11.0