Open-source clause update from lawyer

[colans]

I had a lawyer review the clause that keeps things open source. Here's what he suggested.

[danielbeardsley]

I'm tempted to not approve this change. While it's probably more legally defensible, it makes it far less readable which negates the simplistic and approachable nature of this contract.

[colans]

Fair enough. If that's your goal, I understand. I'm more in favour of legal defensibility myself (as I really see that as the major reason for using a contract in the first place) so if you're not interested in putting this in, I'll just merge it into my own fork. Thanks for looking it over.

[danielbeardsley]

I feel like phrases similar to "Notwithstanding the foregoing" are just lawyer-speak for "Except as noted above" and the unnatural verbiage is unnecessary.

Also, the phrase "in his sole and absolute discretion" is kinda ridiculous. When you say "[So and so] reserves the right to do [X]" I can't imagine how any judge would interpret that as "[So and so] reserves the right to do [X] only if permitted by or compelled by [Y]". Explicitly stating where a party is allowed to think and act on their own implies that every place where that phrasing is not used, the party is NOT allowed to think and act "under their own discretion".

[colans]

I never updated this, but you can see my fork at https://gitlab.com/colan/service_contracts_legal now.