[jsnell]

So, I'm also confused by your response. I wrote that it's not correct that the no-warranty clause of the MIT license has been declared void. And you seem to be saying that this is in conflict with the appeals judgement not talking about the warranty clause. But that's what I was saying! Nothing has been decided about the MIT license.

The lawsuit was originally dismissed without trial since the lower courts thought that the lawsuit did not have a chance of succeeding due to resting on the claim that the Bitcoin developers had a fiduciary duty to Bitcoin users (i.e. to act in the users' best interest). The appeals court thought that there's a legit case to be made for such a fiduciary duty existing. They did not say it exists, or under what circumstances it would exist. Just that there should be a trial to determine that.

[nullc]

You are right, but there is also a level of reality that needs to be injected: If open source can't be confident of a dismissal these kinds of claims on a summary basis it probably can't exist.

The cost of winning at trial is great enough to be ruinous especially relative to a volunteer effort.

In the case of Bitcoin we're probably better off in the sense that there are wealthy supporters willing to step up and take on costs. But there isn't anything about this that couldn't be applied more broadly to impose far ranging duties on other open source developers.

(FWIW, a fiduciary duty is far broader than just a duty to act in their best interest, it is a duty of single minded loyalty to put their interests over all others, including the fiduciary's own).