[repost] [j at uriah.heep.sax.de: For Approval: The beer-ware license]

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Russ Nelson (nelson at crynwr.com):
> Matthew Flaschen writes:
>  > That's just not true.  It says "/you can/ buy me a beer in return.".
>  > "You can" can be interpreted as "You are able to" or "You have
>  > permission to" (in which case "You may" would have been more clear).  It
>  > can not be interpreted as "You are obligated to".
> 
> Nonsense.  It's in the license, so it must be imposing a legal
> obligation.  If it merely informs the person that they are able to buy
> the author a beer, they could do that even if was absent from the
> license.  Why is it in there?

<deadpan>
Luckily, we've never seen pointless and redundant, or semantically null, 
sentences, let alone non-binding expressions of the author's desires or
philosophy, in any software licence before, making this a useful heuristic.
</deadpan>

-- 
Cheers,                                      "Reality is not optional."
Rick Moen                                             -- Thomas Sowell
rick at linuxmafia.com