Dan Appleman on Reinventing Software Licenses
Dan suggests that software licenses be limited to 500 words, and that they be restricted in content from certain areas (like forbidding reviews, etc).
Why stop at software licenses? All law is complex, isn't it? Let's simplify it all!
The problem with any effort to simplify law is that there was a reason it got complex in the first place. English is not an unambiguous language -- and legalese is an attempt at disambiguation. Bodies of law are called "code(s)" for largely the same reason that application source is called code: you have to specify a problem so completely even a computer -- or a court -- can solve it. And we all know how dumb courts and computers are.
I'd love it if law could be simple. But the world isn't, and anything that has to assert unambiguous things about the world can't be either.
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