[License-discuss] [License-review] CC withdrawl of CC0 from OSI process

Bruce Perens bruce at perens.com
Mon Feb 27 15:00:09 UTC 2012


On 02/27/2012 12:57 AM, David Woolley wrote:
> The software analogy is flawed in that software has to be understood 
> by a machine and is written in a language with very precisely defined 
> semantics.  Legal documents are written to be interpreted by a human 
> and, unfortunately, legal language is not a simple formal language
The structure of laws, courts, and contracts is indeed a machine that 
executes statements of rules. That it does so /fuzzily/ and through 
human rather than machine elements is not necessarily a /flaw /of the 
system, in that it is invariably asked to handle unforseen problems, and 
extends itself by doing so.

A machine-executed language for legal rule sets is a frequently 
expressed, unachieved dream. But any program in such a language would 
necessarily be closed in its capabilities, and would need to fall back 
on humans for those unforseen problems. So, you wouldn't lose the courts 
or the arguing over what something "really means".

     Thanks

     Bruce

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