On Sun, Jun 25, 2006 at 01:23:26PM +0200, Hilaire Fernandes wrote:
Cees De Groot a �mcrit :
On 6/24/06, Hilaire Fernandes hilaire@ext.cri74.org wrote:
Other people attending the meeting have shown absolutely *NO INTEREST* in the matter, it is sad :(
I don't know. It might also be an indicator that the licensing "issues" are largely just perceived, or deemed to be PR stuff, or whatever. But not a real actual stumbling block to actual Squeak practicioners.
I totally agree with you. The licensing "issues" does not prevent Squeak to be a free software, it is just preventing Squeak to enter mainstream in the free software community.
Hilaire
+1
I have been pushing Dr. Geo I into junior and senior high schools here in Taiwan. It was such a pleasure to know that Hilaire is releasing Dr. Geo II using LGPL. But for the moment I have to hold back the push for Dr. Geo II because it is built with Squeak, whose license issue is just about to be resolved yet. As Hilaire has frequently urged me to try, there must be a lot more other very interesting and useful tools in education built with Squeak just like Dr. Geo II.
Personally I wouldn't care the "small license bug" (as Hilaire calls it) when I demonstrate things to my nieces and nephews. When it comes to promoting the software publicly, it is totally different. As a long time FS advocate who have made peripheral contributions such as the "Software Category Drawing" on the gnu site, I would constantly get into defensive position about the license issue if I were to promote software with this license bug. The worst part is that the defense would be against the FS community, the force that built my reputation and strength. Political thinking? Yes, but practical nontheless. You chose to pursue Squeak because of practical considerations (in the technical sense) , and I chose not to because of the very same reason (in the political sense).
With high respect to the squeak community I plead your attention to the license issue. Now that the old version becomes free, I personally believe that it is only a matter of time that the entire thing becomes free and that major distributions start packaging this nice software in a few years. I will be glad to help rewrite some less important components whose authors can no longer be contacted for a change of license, and release it as LGPL or less retrictive license as the squeak community sees appropriate. (Good at geometry/algorithms/regexp, OK at OOP and many languages, no smalltalk experience.) When the license issue is comfortably resolved, I will then go back to the political arena and start a major push here in Taiwan ;-) BTW I believe there are many FS advocates around the world who hold more or less similar attitude. It would be beneficial to the squeak community and to the world at large if the squeak community announces the decision to move towards a "bug-free" license and call for participation to accelarate the transition.
Best Regards,