Hacker News Reader

Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

> at this time we are not entertaining any changes as such.

Always wonder what leads people to write like this. What does "as such" add to the sentence? At least "at this time" is temporally conditional to the future, it has purpose.

Entertaining is posh "thinking about" or "interested in" so had the merit of being one word in place of two but so is "considering"

Are we not entertained?

View on HN

Well, it means no changes _intended as_ changes [pertaining to the topic at hand]; it implies there may be incidental alterations or differences, eg this issue might be addressed in a blanket legal revamp (whatever that's called) but, at least over this, they aren't pulling over the station wagon to argue with the screaming stakeholders in the back.

It's what we used to call "load-bearing vagueness"

> "load-bearing vagueness"

Stealing this. That's ACE!!

Are you asking why the person who published code with an ambiguous license also answers questions ambiguously?

Are you asking why the person who indirectly implied a question about the meaning of an ambiguous statement would leave it to the subtext to suggest they suspected that the unclear motive of the author of an ambiguous license was to leave some room for interpretation?

Not as such, no. But I would entertain making a claim I was, should I become sufficiently enthused.

It's good English, it has actual meaning (your thinking of "at this time" is only one interpretation, it more likely means "We're not entertaining changes of that kind/nature" )

Ah, so any changes they did entertain, would be changes, but they disclaim making changes such as these for this purpose?

> so any changes they did entertain

I guess, as long as people remember that zero is a possible number in 'any'

> but they disclaim making changes such as these for this purpose?

That's my read

i think it's just meant to add an air of poise and propriety as such

It's just a corporate-mask tone of detaching from the message; it has the air of stock phrasing like "to whom it may concern"

"I know I'm being unreasonable. But the impression I'd like to give is different than that."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com