[OSM-talk] OSM license change: A license to kill? -> How to make a nightmare come true!

[Russ Nelson]

On Mar 5, 2009, at 12:19 PM, graham wrote:
> I think it would be
> extremely helpful if the licenses themselves included an explanation  
> for
> non-lawyers, in the way the gpl always did.

Not always a good idea.  If your license has any ambiguities, then a  
judge will go outside your license to see if you've said anything else  
about the meaning of the license.  Potentially, anything you say about  
the license could become part of the license.  So your non-legal  
explanation actually may have legal import.

In principle, you're suggesting that code should be explained in the  
comments, when actually, comments should explain things that *aren't*  
in the code.  If you want to know what the code says, you should be  
reading the code, not the comments.  If you want to know what a legal  
agreement says, you should read it.  It's tedious, yes, but I've read  
every one of the OSI approved Open Source licenses at least twice, and  
I lived through it.  if you call this living, of course.  I could be a  
zombie, and how would you know??

--
Russ Nelson - http://community.cloudmade.com/blog - http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:RussNelson
russ at cloudmade.com - http://openstreetmap.org/user/RussNelson

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