Nuclear facilities are out of the question

29 Sep 2005  around lunchtime  Matt Winckler

So today I decided to try out Konfabulator, because iTunes minimizes into a little player that is too tall for my tastes–I wanted one that would fit neatly in the height of a typical window titlebar, so I could keep it on top without obscuring anything important. I haven’t actually gotten Konfabulator installed yet; right now I’m looking at its license agreement. See, I ran across a gem therein, and it was too good to pass up. I quote.

1(d) Except as explicity provided in Section 1(c) above with respect to Widgets, YOU MAY NOT:
…
(iv) Use the Software to operate nuclear facilities, life support, or otther mission critical application [sic] where human life or property may be at stake. You understand that the Software is not designed for such purposes and that its failure in such cases could lead to death, personal injury, or severe property or environmental damage for which Yahoo! is not responsible.

Well, smokes. There goes my plan to implement my own personal nuclear reactor’s monitoring and control software on the Konfabulator code base. Yes, I know in today’s world it’s important to mitigate any sort of responsibility for anything, but running a nuclear facility?

They even bother to make sure this little provision stays in effect no matter what happens:

1. Surviving Provisions.

Sections 1(d), 2, and 4 through 12, [sic] will survive any termination of this Agreement.

Incidentally, for the curious, I’m not completely clear on this but it does appear to me that Section 1(c) allows you to write a Widget that would run a nuclear facility, but for personal noncommercial use only, and (in capital letters) YOU WILL BE TAKING YOUR LIFE, WELFARE, HAPPINESS, AND SANITY, AND THAT OF OTHERS, INTO YOUR OWN HANDS, AND NOBODY BUT YOU WILL BE RESPONSIBLE FOR ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING THAT MAY RESULT FROM YOU USING THE SOFTWARE.

I will begin writing my Nuclear Facility Monitoring and Operations Widget (0.1) as soon as I score a nuclear facility on the cheap.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2005 at 13:30 and is filed under Humor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.