[copyleft-next] use of "shall"

Richard Fontana fontana at sharpeleven.org
Tue Nov 27 03:40:24 UTC 2012


On 11/26/2012 10:04 PM, Luis Villa wrote:
> Attention conservation notice: minor drafting quibbling follows.
> 
> Secs. 11.4 and 15 should probably be redrafted to remove shall.
> 
> Shall should only be used under very specific circumstances- basically
> as a synonym for "has a duty to."

[...]

> Sec. 15:
> 
> "If any provision of this License is invalid or unenforceable under
> applicable law, it [has a duty to] not affect the validity or
> enforceability of the remainder of this License..."
> 
> shall -> will ("it will not affect...")
> 
> "and reviewing courts [have a duty to] reform such provision to the
> minimum extent necessary to make such provision valid and
> enforceable."
> 
> This is not grammatically incorrect, but it's a little odd, since the
> courts have no duty here to do anything. :) Could use instead: "and We
> intend that reviewing courts should reform..." or simply "reviewing
> courts should reform".

So would you similarly critique the several similar usages of "shall"
in MPL 2.0? :-)

- RF


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