

License Haiku - danso
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/000360

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barbs
Cute. But if you're looking for something accurate, informative _and_ brief,
try <http://www.tldrlegal.com/>

~~~
danso
I posted this because I remembered hearing it during his memorial service last
week. I also thought it was cute then, and it was one of funnier moments in
the service. But thinking about it again, I wonder if there's something a
haiku can more memorably convey than the more useful format of tldrlegal
cannot? The latter can obviously drill down to more detail. But the haiku
version, while not only being more memorable, can provide the distilled
context of the law in a way that a point by point summary doesn't.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of Aaron's particular haikus since I don't know
the law that well. And I expect the haikus are flawed, since he wrote them
when 16. Still, a pretty interesting idea of communicating complex terms, even
if much of the value is in cuteness.

~~~
barbs
Yeah true. I'm no haiku aficionado, but it seems that the beauty of it
partially comes from its rigid format, forcing the writer to distill something
down to its essence.

On a side note, I kind of wish I knew Japanese, so I could read some authentic
original haikus. Apparently they're much nicer in Japanese...

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noonespecial
A strange thing legalese. The more words in the document, the less clear its
intent.

Its like approaching a theoretical limit. A lawyer's dream contract. A
document that contains all words, in all combinations, and means absolutely
nothing.

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damian2000
Reminded me of [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/pick-a-license-
any-...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/04/pick-a-license-any-
license.html)

~~~
barbs
Not sure I agree with his description of the GPL license:

 _The archetypal bearded, sandal-clad free software license. Your code can
never be used in any proprietary program, ever! Take that, capitalism!_

You can totally use it in any proprietary program, you just have to provide
the source as well.

~~~
pc86
I think sometimes people confuse "proprietary" with "this is mine and you
can't touch and I'm going to smack you if you try."

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mistercow
I really like these, even though the standard English interpretation of the
haiku form bugs me to no end.

~~~
zem
i find it's a lot less annoying if you simply call them "senryu"

~~~
mistercow
Definitely better, although there's no obvious way to map _on_ to English.
Using morae works OK, but most non-linguists don't even know what that means,
much less how to count the morae in English phrases.

~~~
zem
i'm not entirely convinced basing english poetic constraints on morae makes
sense. for faux-senryu in particular, i've found that simply sticking to 5/7/5
syllables, coupled with a good feel for the rhythms of english speech,
produces very pleasing results.

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spookylukey
See also Gervase Markham's "Poetic Licence"
<http://www.gerv.net/writings/poetic-licence/bsd.html>

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hawkw
This is glorious. The haiku error methods from BeOS come to mind.

