On Sat, 6 Jan 2001, Robert Dewar wrote:

> In article
> <Pine.LNX.4.10.10101051416490.27577-100000@lexis.di.fct.unl.pt>
> 
> > Some of us can only understand _short_ legal texts,
> > because we become very sleepy after the first ten lines ;-)
> 
> I cannot tell you how many court cases wallow in chaos caused
> by non-lawyers thinking things like this, and writing down
> what they think are simple straight-forward agreements that
> turn out to be anything but.

They should be straight-forward, in fact like the hundreds of contracts you
do each day in plain natural language (not legalese), without any problem
of interpretation. Court law should proceed this way: first decided what
was rigth; then he would lookup for the laws to backup his decision.

> > I keep looking for an understandable ten-line digest of GPL
> > and "open source".
> 
> You will not find one, any ten line digest of a license
> agreement is going to be full of confusion, misleading
> implications, and errors.

Actually such digests exist, usually in licences as a note after the
reference to the GPL, saying "essentially what this means is ... [10 line
digest here]".

> I am sure there are people who would like to find a 4 page
> booklet clearly describing all of Ada.

4-page is perhaps too little, but it is a fact that nice Ada programs are
written without their author having gone through the whole ARM.

> If you don't clearly understand the GPL, how can you possibly
> make the judgment that your license (which I have not read)
> is compatible with the GPL?

I understand it roughly, from the digests. Perhaps sometime I will be able
to study it fully. It is simply a matter of personal priorities, really: I
still have the ARM to go through ;-) Fortunately I am a non-lawer.

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Also, the problems you mention sound characteristic of USA law. There is a
world outside USA, you know, with a lot of different law systems. The
Internet and open source must of course consider this.

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Thanks. I am learning a lot from this rare thread on AdĒlib.

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