On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 4:50 PM, Bruce Perens <[email protected]> wrote: > On 02/26/2012 02:31 PM, David Woolley wrote: >> >> >> The reality is that the people who have to comply with licences are not >> professional lawyers. > > This is always in my thoughts when considering any Open Source license. > > We can fail these people in two ways: > 1. Provide them with a license that they might not understand. > 2. Provide them with a license that won't hold up in court. > > The second damages them more. The first can be solved with explanation > separate from the license.
If the first can be solved with an explanation separate from the license, why not use that instead? Of course we don't use that instead because the explanation is not the same as the license. I also wonder whether in court a defendant could successfully argue that the explanation is itself a license as well and therefore when they disagree, the most permissive interpretation of either wins? I think it's important to keep licenses short, understandable in plain English (outside of formulaic warranty disclaimers), and to the point. Sure there will be some abuse in some corners, but the alternative is to write increasingly long, complex, and unintelligible licenses whose main virtue is giving lawyers something to argue about what exactly they mean in court....... Best Wishes, Chris Travers _______________________________________________ License-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://projects.opensource.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss
