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

Russ Nelson russ at cloudmade.com
Thu Mar 5 19:18:40 GMT 2009


On Mar 5, 2009, at 1:06 PM, Matt Amos wrote:
>>
> ummm.... good? as long as the explanation doesn't contradict the
> license, what is the problem?

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.

> but if the code confuses you then you read the comments for
> enlightenment, right?

   /* Add one to the length */
   length += l;

> 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?

Code: interpreted by computer; comments: interpreted by a human.

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.

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

I don't understand why people think steve has an evil portal of doom  
in his basement.  It's in his attic.

--
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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