At 8:32 -0400 2000.09.12, Ben Tilly wrote:
>>That's just silly. None of those issues were around when the BSD and MIT
>>licenses were penned. They are very simple licenses that most any
>>reasonable person could have written. None of them could cite chapter and
>>verse what the issues are that you are referring to, because those issues
>>were not around back then.
>>
>Actually some of them were.
Well, of course. But many of them were not, and your point was that one
should know all the issues.
>But the BSD and MIT licenses are simple because they do not
>attempt to do anything interesting. As I mentioned elsewhere,
>the more concerned you are with control, the more you need to
>worry about potential ways to circumvent that control. As
>neither the BSD nor MIT licenses try to assert much control,
>they can be simple.
That's fine. It does not take away from my point that we can write a
license. Yes, my example license was very simple, and therefore easy to
write a first draft in a few seconds. The AL is more complex, and
therefore should take longer, and require some more heads. The fact that
it is more complex does not mean we need a lawyer to write it.
>Have you ever tried to write a computer program that your
>client has, "Already written about 90% of, it just needs a
>few touches."? If you have had that sad experience you
>will almost certainly have had to tear it apart and rewrite
>from scratch.
>
>Well legal documents are similar.
So? So we rewrite if we need to. What's the problem there? I've spent
much of my life rewriting prose after editors get done with it. That is
part of the process. Or, to borrow from ESR, "plan to throw one [or more]
away."
--
Chris Nandor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://pudge.net/
Open Source Development Network [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://osdn.com/
