Just stop talking. Nothing you say after that point will be
any good for you or your company.
These words of wisdom were shared with me by Donald
(@DonaldOJDK), and I get constant reminders about how correct they are.
My favorite foot-in-mouth story is a thread with, what I
though, were two sales reps that were in conversation with a customer about the
BCL. I keep replying “I can not interpret contracts for you since I do not have
a law degree”, but they keep asking and asking and asking. Finally, in
frustration, I reply, “I am not a lawyer, but it’s perfectly obvious to me that
XYZ is the correct interpretation, and I’m sure that your local legal rep will
back the obvious interpretation up”. Somewhat happy about closing the
conversation that would not stop I go for a coffee. When I come back I have an
email from one of the sales reps who, as it turns out, was not a sales rep at
all – “I AM the local legal rep, and it’s far from obvious to me…”.
This leads to a note to self – Do not comment on legal
matters. It’s surprising how hard that is. That and realizing that I need to
learn to live with that fact that there are people on the Internet that are
wrong, are difficult things.
But why, people ask, can you not summarize how license X
works?
Let me start to answer by showing two examples of code.
Version 1.
printf(“Hello World!”);
Version 2.
String res = new
String();
LanguageStuff ls = new
LanguageStuff();
res = “World”;
res = “ “ + res;
res = “Hello” + res;
res = res +
ls.puncuation(LanguageStuff.EXCLAMATION_MARK);
printf(res);
res = “” // Help with GC
They both work, somewhat. But it’s obvious that one of them
is unnecessarily complex, not to mention verbose. If you saw a fellow developer
writing Version 2 code you would likely correct him and send him to a beginners
coding training.
So as developers we try to write code that is as clear and
concise as possible. As long as every case is covered a reasonable rule is –
shorter and more readable code is better code.
So why is it that we seem to believe that lawyers always
write contracts using Version 2? I think it’s safe to assume that the 10x
theory of developers also apply to lawyers and that some of them are brilliant
and some of them will be not as great. Same as with developers and just about
every other profession. So when in doubt
I always assume that the contract or license is written as short and as clear
as possible, while still containing all the parts needed for it to be legally
complete. So the reason that I will not try to summarize a license is that I do
believe that the person with the law degree that wrote it is a better lawyer
than I am. If she could have written it shorter and clearer, I will have to
assume that she would have.
That being said, I am still to understand why something is
MORE LEGALLY BINDING IF WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS. (YES, I’M LOOKING AT YOU BCL)