Clarification on copyleft-next 0.3.1

[Ben Cotton]

On Mon, Aug 3, 2026 at 1:08 AM Richard Fontana <fontana at sharpeleven.org> wrote:
>
> > 4. Why is the definitions placed in section 15 ? Should it not be in section 1 instead of being in section 15 for comprehensive ability/ readability ?
>
> There have been some versions where the definitions are at the
> beginning. I had a colleague at Red Hat who liked to put definitions
> at the end -- they argued that this made the document more readable --
> and at the relevant time this made an impression on me. In my
> experience, in US legal contracts, if there is a definitions section
> it's typically at the beginning, but putting them at the end is not
> some outlandish or radical practice. I don't know of any other FLOSS
> license that puts definitions at the end. Future versions of
> copyleft-next, assuming they have a definitions section, may very well
> put them in the beginning.

For what it's worth, I find having the definitions at the end more
readable. In practice, as a non-lawyer user of software licenses, I
have a "good sense" of what the defined terms generally mean and so
I'd rather read the actual license part and then look at specific
definitions later if I need to. This is increasingly true as the
number of times I've read a particular license recently increases.

The easier it is for a "casual" reader (to the degree that term even
applies to someone reading a software license) to get the main points
of the license before their eyes glaze over, the more likely it is
that they'll be able to avoid accidental violations.

-- 
Ben Cotton (he/him)
TZ=America/Indiana/Indianapolis