Comment by nvm0n2
3 years ago
Having EULAs and many types of contract be code would be a huge upgrade.
For one, it'd make them a lot shorter. You could use inheritance or composition to refactor out repetitive boilerplate, which is 90% of what EULAs are. The thing you see would only be the places where it deviates from a base EULA that you could study once.
For another, it would catch bugs automatically. I have caught bugs in contracts drafted by lawyers a bunch of times, just by reading them carefully. For example numbers that are stated in both words and digits but they don't match. References to clauses that no longer exist. Statements that are contradictory.
A properly written language could be compiled to English for people who for some reason can't read the "real" language. But a well written PL for law would be quite readable.
Programming languages and other formal languages add boilerplate, they never remove it. Compare pseudocode for an algorithm with the actual implementation: it will almost always be much shorter.
All of the rest of what you mention could be achieved with plain language contracts exactly as well. Nothing prevents the software industry from getting together and producing a base EULA that all others refer.
Except of course for the fact that it would be utterly impossible to convince companies to agree to such an endeavor, whether in code or plain language or any other way. Especially since the purpose of EULAs is not to be clear, but to confuse end users with verbiage.