<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 2:54 PM, Matt Amos wrote:</div><blockquote type="cite"><div> us trying to read a complex license<br>without comments is like lawyers trying to read complex code without<br>comments.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>They're mostly hard to read because they're tedious in their detail. Legal writing isn't actually THAT impenetrable, if you can stay awake (no, seriously, I can only read 2-3 licenses at a time before I start to nod off. Takes me DAYS to read all the OSI-approved licenses).</div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>i understand, but lawyers have been doing this for a while and surely<br>they have a way of explaining stuff to people who aren't going to<br>understand hardcore legal documents. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, well, since a legal document is written for a customer, the lawyer explains it in confidence to the customer. Everyone else is supposed to rely on the text of the license itself. Or, at least, that's my experience of how it's supposed to go. I may be wrong. </div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>if thats in his attic, what were all those ghastly and inhuman screams<br>coming from his basement?<br></div></blockquote><br></div><div>Oh, that's from the people who've ridden home with him in the back seat of his convertible.</div><br><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>