Subject: Re: GPL V3 and Linux
From: Bernd Petrovitsch <bernd@firmix.at>
To: Bas Westerbaan <bas.westerbaan@gmail.com>
Cc: Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu, Ian Kester-Haney <ikesterhaney@gmail.com>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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Organization: Firmix Software GmbH
Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 11:25:36 +0100
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On Fri, 2006-01-27 at 11:13 +0100, Bas Westerbaan wrote:
> > should IMHO readable and understandable by the average citizen).
> >
> > And if they can't write it down unambigously, I actually question if
> > we
> > want to accept laws/court decisions about rules and concepts
> > which
> > cannot be even written down in a simple enough and clear way.
> 
> Ambiguous laws are compromizes. They are required sometimes. Who will

Technically, all laws are ambigous (since you do not have them based on
clear definitions as in mathemnatic and the like but only natural
language).
But I have a problem with that extreme type of ambigousness that
actually is IMHO already a contradiction.
And remember: Continental Europe doesn't have case law (except the mess
and intentions produced by the EPO). So the law system here *needs*
relatively clear laws which are of course interpreted by judges in court
and clarified with court decisions. But a court decision actually can
not make a law.
And now explain to me how a judge with a technical knowledge as a
typical 50 year old Win* user should decide if a given "access control"
is "effective" or not?
Of course they have external specialists (how are they callen in
English?) in court who try to explain and give the (fair) opinion on the
given case. But usually each party gets such a quote supporting their
side. So how should the judge actually decide correctly?
And IMHO it doesn't work out to define the judges decision as
"correct" (like usual in the law system as such) if it is technically
incorrect.

> prevail depends on who can affort the best lawyer in court.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I'd love readable laws, but with the current
> politics it isn't possible.

It may be worse than with other politics, but layers are not interested
in readable laws.
You can make much more money out of a system where you need secret
languages (think of the catholic church in early medieval age with
everything in Latin) .....

	Bernd, fairly off-topic now. Sorry.
-- 
Firmix Software GmbH                   http://www.firmix.at/
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