A disclaimer should be added to all documentation

[winfried]

@winfried I support your proposal for a disclaimer; this would avoid a lot of confusion. But I based on my experience with open source legal theory and medical law applying to software and systems I propose improvements, as follows.

Disclaimer related to DP-3T project designs and software

Contact tracing by mobile applications is a highly speculative technology. It is far from certain it can contribute to stopping or managing the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus at all or to what extent. The open source license of the project implies that the project can offer no warranty and disclaims any liability for the use of its designs or software.

Any statements about e.g. GDPR certification, medical certification, and aimed-for medical effects that are made to by the project or contributed to the project should be interpreted as being speculative in nature, applying to a work in progress.

If you are planning to use the software or designs in a trial deployment or production deployment of a contact tracing system, you should take great care, and do your own independent evaluations, to avoid breaking any laws like the GDPR or applicable medical laws, and to avoid creating any harm, medical or otherwise, to the population targeted by your deployment.

Note to the project on the nature of this contribution: I am not a lawyer, so I recommend that the DP-3T team finds a volunteer lawyer to check and probably improve the disclaimer above. It is unclear to me if there is any legal theory at the moment that can support a conclusion that the MPL 2.0 license used by the project or the text I wrote above combined will be enough to fully shield everybody from prosecution under country-local or state-local medical regulations designed to prosecute specifically against misleading the public about medical matters. I am not sure if any other project has already consulted a lawyer -- maybe something better than what I wrote above is already available in another project repository.

Originally posted by @kholtman in #224 (comment)