discussion of the Creative Commons Metadata work

[Evan Prodromou <evan AT prodromou.name>]

So, I'm glad to see the automated text that's created when you use the
licensing tool on Creative Commons has been changed so that it no longer
says "under a Creative Commons license."

As we all know, 'if someone proposes to "use a Creative Commons license"
for a certain work, it is vital to ask immediately, "Which one?"'[1]
VITAL, I SAY! DO NOT WAIT ONE MICROSECOND TO ASK THIS QUESTION!!! LIVES
ARE IN THE BALANCE! Because if you manage to ask this question VERY VERY
FAST, you win the game of being the smartest person in the room and
someone will finally love you, ungroomed beard and all.

Uh... ahem. Sorry about that. Got a little carried away.

It's good that that objection has finally been resolved, but I have a
new one. The generated text now says something along the lines of:

        Work X by Author Y is licensed under a Creative Commons
        Attribution 2.5 Canada License.
        
I'm not sure the indefinite article is appropriate here. "Creative
Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada License" names one and only one thing,
and in English we use "the" in such cases. So maybe this would be less
weird-sounding:

        Work X by Author Y is licensed under _the_ Creative Commons
        Attribution 2.5 Canada License.

It's not a big deal (definitely not vital!), but it does read better.

-Evan

P.S. If we were going to go all crazy with the wordsmithery, we might
also try to find a way not to use the word "license" twice in the same
sentence.

[1] http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/

Attachment: smime.p7s
Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature