On Wed, Nov 26, 2003 at 01:30:46AM +0100, Alex Schroeder wrote:
> Why do you think it is not appropriate for a legal document? I have
> heard a friend with a law PhD here in Switzerland say that a broad and
> fuzzy text is just as appropriate for legal texts, because then the
> court will examine the intents of the wording, and interpret it
> according to the situation at hand.
What that actually means is that you cannot predict in advance what
the result of the lawsuit will be. Good for lawyers, bad for you.
> I'd love to see an example of a case that failed because the license
> was too fuzzy...
Every single case involving a software license upon which the court
delivered a judgement (ie, not dismissed or settled).
No, really. By definition, every such case has one winner ("success")
and one loser ("failure").
I suspect that what you meant was that you would like to see an
example where the licenser lost because of the way the license was
worded. That's pretty common, actually.
If you, as the licenser, want to determine the outcome of a given case
in advance, then write the desired outcome into the license directly
("You may X, you may not Y"). If you do not, then the outcome must
necessarily be in doubt. This is your only opportunity to do this.
--
.''`. ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
: :' : http://www.debian.org/ |
`. `' |
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