<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Mar 5, 2009, at 1:06 PM, Matt Amos wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote>ummm.... good? as long as the explanation doesn't contradict the<br>license, what is the problem?</div></blockquote><div><br></div>The problem is that you've got an impedance mismatch. If you comment about your license, it can become PART OF your license, which means that you need to be careful that everything you say has a proper legal meaning, which breaks the idea of explaining things without using legalese.</div><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>but if the code confuses you then you read the comments for<br>enlightenment, right?</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div> /* Add one to the length */</div><div> length += l;</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>i don't think you're saying that code without<br>comments is OK (although a "heated discussion" to have on another day,<br>perhaps), so why should a license without an explanation be OK?</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Code: interpreted by computer; comments: interpreted by a human.</div><div><br></div><div>License: interpreted by a human; comments: interpreted by a human. And my point from above is that the barrier between the two is not hard and fast.</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>did you come out of steve's evil basement portal of dooom? :-P</div></blockquote><br></div><div>I don't understand why people think steve has an evil portal of doom in his basement. It's in his attic.</div><div><br></div><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>--<br>Russ Nelson - <a href="http://community.cloudmade.com/blog">http://community.cloudmade.com/blog</a> - <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson">http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson</a><br><a href="mailto:russ@cloudmade.com">russ@cloudmade.com</a> - <a href="http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson">http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson</a></div></div></span> </div><br></body></html>