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Comment by TrickyRick | Hacker News Reader

If someone asks you to bring wine or beer to a party, do you usually bring both? Because that would still be valid in an OR statement but basing your ordinary life decisions on boolean logic doesn't always work out like you expect it.

If a contract is written as:

You own things you make on your own time unless you're using company equipment provided: * The thing does not relate to company business * The thing does not result from work you do for the company

It's pretty clear cut what this means and a judge would not care for boolean logic. Of course it's hard to know for sure without knowing the exact wording of the contract.

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Yes, I think that if someone asked me to bring "wine or beer" to a party, literally everyone I know would be fine with me bringing a bit of both.

In fact, what would be weird would be someone objecting to my bringing both on the grounds that they meant, but didn't say, "xor".

I don't think this contract is ambiguous in natural language. Or is generally inclusive, and if you want xor you either write xor or use some cumbersome circumlocution.

I would call them out if they object and was to sloopy to write "either X or Y"

XOR is the natural use of or in English. Do you want to get subs or pizza? Are you going to vote for A or B?

Logical OR is often written as ‘and or’. Do you want to see a movie and or get dinner? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/And/or

That said it’s not a universal standard and like most of English has wide regional differences.

I think whether "or" means inclusive or or xor is in fact ambiguous and determined by context in English. I think if you as a megacorp write ambiguous contracts and try to enforce them against your employees, you do not deserve a sympathetic interpretation from the courts.

In fact such interpretations of contract ambiguities (in favor of weaker party) are even codified in some countries, most notably the whole of EU [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contra_proferentem

That or is not really a XOR becomes clear when you negate it. I don't want subs or pizza. I am not going to vote for A or B.

I would say OR is the natural use, and exclusion is implied by the context in these examples.

There are plenty of examples where A and B is treated as a negation of A or B. “Do you want A or B? Why not both?” As one example from a popular mime. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/why-not-both-why-dont-we-have...

I'm sure they would be fine with it, but that would not be what they expect. As others have pointed out the common implication of "or" in English is really XOR.

> You own things you make on your own time unless you're using company equipment provided: * The thing does not relate to company business * The thing does not result from work you do for the company

While "on your own time" and "using company equipment" are reasonably clear concepts, the other two clauses are too debatable to be an acceptable risk. It's not a matter of Boolean logic.

There was an explicit "or", it wasn't just two clauses in a list. And "or" vs "xor" doesn't make any sense here, if it were "xor" then Google would own anything you did by actual default (i.e. that had neither anything to do with Google's business nor resulted from work done for Google), which makes no sense. It is explicitly an "or" and clearly means inclusive or, not exclusive or.

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