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

[David Woolley]

Bruce Perens wrote:

> 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.

Where I would see a particular advantage in a machine processable 
language, would in handling ANDs, ORs and the scope of particular 
conditions.  There was a recent example of UK secondary legislation that 
made an AND/OR/negation type of mistake, in the wording of a statutory 
notice that was supposed to summarise primary legislation. As a result, 
it appeared to imply that certain sorts of debts to a landlord could 
never be recovered.

> 
> 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".


-- 
David Woolley
Emails are not formal business letters, whatever businesses may want.
RFC1855 says there should be an address here, but, in a world of spam,
that is no longer good advice, as archive address hiding may not work.