Proposal for TWO official releases

goran.hultgren at bluefish.se goran.hultgren at bluefish.se
Thu Apr 18 12:57:17 UTC 2002


cg at cdegroot.com (Cees de Groot) wrote:
> Maarten Maartensz <maartens at xs4all.nl> said:
> >- To maintain TWO releases as a standard policy:
> >    A. Developers' release 
> >    B. Learning & Teaching release
> >
> The idea I vented a couple of times, and that met with only little resistance
> is to have SqF produce a "core release", and other groups around SqF, in a
> true chaordic manner, produce their own releases from there:
> - Learning & Teaching release, by SqueakLand;
> - Developer's release, from the SourceForge SqueakDevEnv project;
> - Business Release, from the 250 people IBM Squeak eBusiness group;
> - ...
[SNIP]

Different "configurations" of Squeak will become much more a reality
when modules are starting to work as intended. In the modules model a
"configuration" of Squeak - what you call a release - will be just
another module.

Se keep that dream alive! :-)

You also mentioned some form of portal for finding Squeak stuff - I have
some code in the works. I call it SqueakMap and will post what I have
shortly. It's an apt-get kindof-thingy (as in Debian) which maintains a
local mirror (using incremental gzipped updates - very low bandwidth) of
a central module meta-card-repository. It's pretty nice actually.

> >Finally (somewhat) in the present context: I agree with Lex Spoon's recent
> >remark to the effect that "open source" is a more comprehensive term than
> >the OpenSource.org admits, and that Squeak IS patently open source in
> >coming with its source code. 
> I agree, to an extent (see below). For all practical purposes, you can
> use Squeak just like you can use any other open source package.
> 
> >I think it unwise to restrict the meaning of
> >"open source" to what gets the blessing of the OpenSource.org: The basic
> >principle of open source applications, after all, is that one gets to see
> >and manipulate all the code of the application and not whether
> >OpenSource.org or Richard Stallmann are willing to endorse it as open
> >source in THEIR preferred senses.
> >
> However, there's a very good reason for this. If something is called Open
> Source, you know quite precisely what you can do with it. Similarly, if the
> FSF says "this and this is what we call free software", you know quite well
> the rights you have when something is called "free software". It is important
> to keep these definitions as clean as possible, if alone to help us battling
> fringe cases (like what currently happens, mandatory pop-up ads in software
> that's otherwise licensed as open source). 
> 
> Sadly, the Squeak License limits the rights of the licensees in ways that are
> incompatible both with the definition of "open source" as with the definition
> of "free software". Until that situation is alleviated (and if only to keep it
> on the agenda), it is probably wiser *not* to describe Squeak as "open source"
> (with or without the caps). 
> 
> My proposal would be for Squeak.org to say "Squeak is almost open source",
> where "almost open source" would be a link to a page that explains some of the
> issues with the Squeak License. 

I agree fully with Cees. The waters are already pretty muddled out there
- let's not add to that by misusing the term "open source"/"OpenSource".
It would actually border on deceiving people I think.

Squeak is NOT free software as defined by FSF.
Squeak is NOT open source software as defined by OSI.
Squeak is NOT ok for inclusion in Debian along their DFSG.

Sure - it's awfully close to all three - I agree. But let's say that
then.

regards, Göran



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