It's still long enough that it needs a table of contents with links, as well as long enough that the only people reading it are people looking for legal recourse.
Yes, but instead of being a giant, monolithic wall of pain, it's now broken down into much less daunting chunks of text.
I caught myself actively reading the agreement like it was a blog post. The questions helped frame what I was about to read, and made the answers feel a lot more accessible.
(It also helps that the answers seem like they were written for normal people to understand. They're a little wordy, but in a thorough-yet-not-quite-legalese-y kind of way.)
I'm not sure why you expected any different, better formatting doesn't make a boring content any less boring; if you don't enjoy legalese pretty colors and bold sections aren't going to change that.
Still, a lot better than a lot of other TOS out there that you can't properly read even if you want to because ALL CAPS EVERYWHERE.
Granted, Microsoft's lawyers probably wouldn't approve (because people might argue that they're agreeing to the simplified terms that have wriggle room and not the iron-clad legalese).
I think that works for CC because the people using the license are using the license and not the summary. It's ok if a third party to the licensor provides a summary.
Comments
It's still long enough that it needs a table of contents with links, as well as long enough that the only people reading it are people looking for legal recourse.
Yes, but instead of being a giant, monolithic wall of pain, it's now broken down into much less daunting chunks of text.
I caught myself actively reading the agreement like it was a blog post. The questions helped frame what I was about to read, and made the answers feel a lot more accessible.
(It also helps that the answers seem like they were written for normal people to understand. They're a little wordy, but in a thorough-yet-not-quite-legalese-y kind of way.)
I'm not sure why you expected any different, better formatting doesn't make a boring content any less boring; if you don't enjoy legalese pretty colors and bold sections aren't going to change that.
Still, a lot better than a lot of other TOS out there that you can't properly read even if you want to because ALL CAPS EVERYWHERE.
They could have gone with the CC approach:
For humans: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
For lawyers: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode
Granted, Microsoft's lawyers probably wouldn't approve (because people might argue that they're agreeing to the simplified terms that have wriggle room and not the iron-clad legalese).
I think that works for CC because the people using the license are using the license and not the summary. It's ok if a third party to the licensor provides a summary.