On 02/26/2012 09:00 PM, Chad Perrin wrote:
I suspect a better approach to understandable, legally well-formed license production might be to get someone who wants a very simple license to write it, and only *then* get the lawyers involved. While you're at it, be prepared to make the lawyers explain everything they want to change, and to tell them "no" a lot.The problem with your software, Chad, is that it's much too complicated for /no reason./ There's no reason for half of that "crapton" to be in there. We could cut it down to 10% of its present complexity if we had a /user /who wanted a really simple program write it first, and then we could have a programmer make it work correctly. While the programmer did that, we would make him explain /everything /that he was doing, and we would tell him "no" a lot to curb his natural tendency to add unnecessary complexity.
:-)The pieces you don't like aren't there because anyone likes to put them there or because the people who wrote the license are idiots.
There have been a lot of court cases in history. From those cases, we know a number of things that go wrong in courts. We want you not to get trapped by the same stuff.
I had to help Bob Jacobsen, an Open Source developer who chose one of those over-simple licenses, the Artistic License 1.0, written by Larry Wall the Programmer. Bob had someone who both used his program in a product without even attributing it to him, and /also /asked Bob for lots of money for infringing his patent and tried to get Bob fired from his job by filing an FOIA with his employer. This was all over /model train software./
When Bob turned to Larry's Artistic License to help him get the guy off of his back, the Artistic License failed in court. We put a good team together and turned that around on appeal, but it was a close thing. By the time we were done, Bob had spent 5 years on the case, was out a good deal of money, and his relationship with his employer was damaged.
We might not be able to help the next Bob who comes along and uses one of those licenses written in crayon. You can protect your friends by not encouraging them to do that.
Thanks
Bruce
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