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Comment by YawningAngel | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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 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

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.

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

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