[ChrisSD]

"Legal hacks" are rarely, if ever, as clever as their proponents think. Scepticism is natural and warranted.

Judges aren't complete morons and will take a dim view of "hacks". There could be loopholes somewhere but you'd need a lawyer to spot them.

[jordigh]

One of the most famous "legal hacks", Richard Stallman's copyleft, had to be rewritten by a lawyer. rms wrote GPLv1 by himself and you should never use it. GPLv2 is the version that was actually vetted by a lawyer.

A similar thing happened with Perl's Artistic License. Its version 2 is basically also a lawyer-approved rewrite.

In other words, hackers, don't try this at home. There are professionals who can do this for you.

[nickpeterson]

I find it somewhat sad that law is basically a guild where arcane language is used to gatekeep what should be a much more straightforward exercise.

[Karrot_Kream]

It's not. It's the equivalent of saying "I can do this better" and producing unreliably, buggy code. Sure you can, but a more experienced professional can point out all the corner cases you missed.

[sbov]

Then when it fails, you blame the programming language rather than your experience in programming.

[jancsika]

I find it somewhat sad that programming is basically a guild where arcane language is used to gatekeep what should be a much more straightforward exercise.

[rhacker]

Hahaha, actually at some point in the future, I suspect 25 years or so, our programming guild will likely have taken over and replace the legal guild.

[majewsky]

This would make an interesting entry on http://longbets.org/

[heavenlyblue]

I mean, if you pay attention to the names of the kernel API functions, you'd probably end up with the same conclusion.

[TeMPOraL]

Very relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1494/.