Debian and SqueakL revisited again...(was Re: Debian source package)

Andrew C. Greenberg werdna at mucow.com
Thu Nov 1 13:12:47 UTC 2001


On Thursday, November 1, 2001, at 03:29  AM, Chris Reuter wrote:

> I have a thought.  Why don't we write an open-source license for
> Squeak goodies?
>
> I'm envisioning something similar to the LGPL, only written to suit an
> image-based product and without some of the more annoying bits.

Of course you are free to do so.  Under Squeak-L, you can pretty much 
relicense anything subject to the terms of the Squeak-L, which does 
somewhat limit the scope of the license.

Please don't, however.  The downsides outweigh the upside.

We are, however glacially, beginning to make progress on this front.  In 
due course, we will be in a position to relicense the image in a manner 
that should please everyone, except perhaps RMS.  The last thing we need 
to do, however, is: (1) to create a tower-of-babel, complete with 
license lawyering by everyone; and (2) to have added complexity limiting 
what can happen as we relicense.

For now, Squeak-L's downside has only been its lack of availability on 
an overly conservative free Unix release.  An LGPL license for some, but 
not most of, Squeak will not satisfy the FSF "true believers," as they 
don't like LGPL much (changing "Library" to "Lesser" and deprecating 
it), but may limit the scope of what we can do later on.

I suggest we stay flexible, until we are able to make a proper pass at 
Apple.  By the way, does anyone know if Disney has staked any claim of 
ownership to the SqC contributions during their tenure there?





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