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

[Matt Amos]

On Thu, Mar 5, 2009 at 5:36 PM, Russ Nelson <russ at cloudmade.com> wrote:
> 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.

ummm.... good? as long as the explanation doesn't contradict the
license, what is the problem?

> 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.

isn't it more like comments having an effect on program behaviour
(like openmp annotations)? i'm not endorsing it - its really nasty to
work with - just trying to clarify the analogy... :-(

> 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.

but if the code confuses you then you read the comments for
enlightenment, right? i don't think you're saying that code without
comments is OK (although a "heated discussion" to have on another day,
perhaps), so why should a license without an explanation be OK? i've
been looking at the use cases for this sort of extra information, but
it wouldn't hurt to have more information, especially in lay language
that can be translated for our non-english-speaking comrades.

> 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??

did you come out of steve's evil basement portal of dooom? :-P

cheers,

matt