Proposal to help fight deceptive software

I'm working on a personal project proposing a way to fight deceptive
software at http://www.clearware.org by helping to make sense of software
end-user license agreements (EULA).  P3P and Creative Commons was part of
the inspiration for the idea.  The concept is similar to nutrition facts on
food, care labels on clothing and warnings on hazardous materials... a
"software use" label if you will.

EULA terms and conditions can be grouped into permissions, requirements,
restrictions and functions.  I've identified a set of characteristics that I
found in existing EULAs that impact control over the user's experience,
system security and privacy and depict it with a symbol.

The idea is to translate the laywer readable format (EULA) into a human
readable version (clearware label) and a system readable RDF/XML version (to
automate the use of user preferences similar to P3P and other
possibilities).

I would appreciate thoughts and suggestions from others on this list,
particularly getting the involvement of software vendors.

Regards,
Brian Erdelyi

Received on Wednesday, 6 September 2006 23:32:43 UTC