bsd/gpl/squeak (was: BDF fonts for squeak)

michalstarke starke at uni2a.unige.ch
Mon Jan 24 12:29:39 UTC 2000



> the more BSD-like Squeak license.  

Is it? My (non law-sophisticated) impression is that it strikes an interesting middle-ground between bsd and gpl. Very roughly: if you distinguish 

'my work' = 'my classes, including the change _you_ make to them' versus 
'your work' = 'your classes, including those that extend _my_ classes'
(definitions just as a rough indication of intent, not meant to be precise)

then, rougly again, 
BSD says says that both my work and your work are unrestricted. 
GPL says that both my work and your work are restricted in that they must be kept 'open'.
Squeak says: I decide for my work, you decide for your work. Ie: my work must be kept open; _you_ decide what to do with yours.

We could call the squeak license the 'personal responsability' license ;-)


Therefore, as I understand it (and andrew please correct me if i miss something here!) if the squeak license was cleaned up from font-restrictions, export-restrictions, etc. and made into a clean 'personal responsability' license; then it *would* be compatible with the gpl (just as bsd is compatible with the gpl) [but resulting in an overall gpl bundle of course] .



-- and now onto more delicate parts ---

> FSF opts to redefine the word "free" to make these 
> restrictions more palatable to the choir, but restrictions are 
> restrictions, and those restrictions do not make me free.  

please. We won't resolve the millenary issue of freedom-vs-rules. (as in: "does 'freedom' mean that the rich can oppress the poor and that the poor can kill the rich in return or does 'freedom' mean that there are rules that allow us to live free from those kind of hassles?") This is not about rewriting the word 'free' or not, but about important issues in the ecology of any developing group of objects, including humans. 

With all due respect, a tirade such as yours above is bound to provoke/agress a part of the crowd. So why not respect that there are (apparently) believers on each side of the fence and coexist until we find some actual argument that one of the two positions is 'better' (whatever *that* means ;-).


and now, back to trying to turn squeak into a morphological parser ;-)

michal 





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