Update: I’ve got a response from the FSF on this down in the answers
From the answer to Can I remove all-caps and shorten the disclaimer on my License?, it appears that the APP CAPS sections of a software license are largely to provide extra legal ammo and increase the weight of those sections.
On the flip side, ALL CAPS TEXT is more difficult to read in paragraph form. Furthermore, with formats like markdown, we can provide cleaner alternatives to all-caps “bolding” of text.
So, I’d like to convert (for example) the warranty clause of the MIT license from:
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
to (markdown):
**The software is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or
implied, including but not limited to the warranties of marchantability,
fitness for a particular purpose and noninfringement. In no event shall the
authors or copyright holders be liable for any claim, damages or other
liability, whether in an action of contract, tort or otherwise, arising from,
out of or in connection with the software or the use or other dealings in the
software.**
Is this legally murky territory? (particularly w/ GPL?)
10
All-caps text is a form much loved by lawyers in legal documents when they wish to emphasize an element. Some elements of a legal document do not take effect unless they are emphasized. A license is a legal document. Don’t mess with it.
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Some notes from FSF on the subject:
The license states that only verbatim copying is allowed, but
historically I believe we have not been concerned about superficial
changes. As long as you’re not changing the text itself or using wonky
formatting tricks to try and deceive users about what the license
actually says, it shouldn’t be an issue for us.
On why these sections exist:
Those sections are disclaimers of liability and warranties. In some
jurisdictions, such disclaimers are only effective if they are made
somehow conspicuous. This makes some sense; the disclaimer is meant to
put the user on notice that they should be on guard regarding the item,
so trying to sneak the disclaimer by them by mushing it in with a bunch
of other text (or even making it smaller or harder to read) wouldn’t be
fair. So they are made all-caps to stand out from the rest of the text.
I’m not sure whether bold vs. all-caps makes a difference in terms of
the effectiveness of the disclaimer (you’d have to consult a lawyer in
the particular jurisdiction you are concerned about), but if I had to
guess, all-caps was selected because these licenses are generally
distributed in plain text.
2
I disagree with Ross Patterson (but I’m not a lawyer). A legal document is just text, no matter how is it presented. Putting things in bold or in uppercase indicates that this is important and that the reader should carefully read that (funny as it is, writing text in uppercase would have an opposite effect, and people would skip such unreadable sections), but doesn’t increase or decrease the legal value of the content.
There is no such a thing as a relative legal value which fluctuates depending on the formatting. Otherwise, every piece of legal text would be in Arial Black 100 bold all caps underlined, displayed in blinking red.
If text in all capitals was “importantly mandatory”, what would this mean about the text not in all capitals? Is it “mandatory, but not too much”? Or “mandatory only if you want it to be”? Or not mandatory at all? Nonsense.
Example:
YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO SELL THIS SOFTWARE PRODUCT AS YOUR OWN.
You are neither authorized to decompile or change it, including for personal purposes like learning.
So, can you decompile or change it? Or maybe you can, but only for personal purposes, despite what is said in the text above? If you can’t decompile or change it, what does it change that the text is not in all capitals?
All capitals are generally used in those texts for technical reasons: you can’t use bold in .txt files. Replacing all capitals by bold, given that you can ensure that it will always be displayed in bold, makes no difference.
Of course, as indicated in the comments, you should contact (and you had contacted) FSF to have a definitive response.
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