Lex Spoon <lex at cc.gatech.edu> said:
>Frankly, saying that SqueakL isn't "open source" seems ridiculous.  Can
>you recall what the complaint was?  Everyone can download all the source
>to Squeak, modify it, and redistribute modified versions.  In fact, it
>takes some effort to distribute anything written in Squeak (including
>Squeak itself), *without* including the source code.  If that's not open
>source, then what is?
>
Among others, I can't modify and pass on everything - for example,
I'm not allowed to pass on the bitmap fonts without including all
of Squeak; furthermore, I'm not free to pass it on to anyone I like,
because the license requires me to adhere to some foreign country's
export regulations. That may not make a difference for you (because as
a US citizen, you are already bound by your government's laws), but it
does make a difference for the other 96% of the world's population.

Open Source is *not* just being able to peek at the source. For example,
even though for all practical purposes qmail by Dan Bernstein rocks, it
is definitely *not* Open Source because it has very strict limitations
on redistribution of source code (and as Open Source is about free
speech, the amount of redistribution allowed is critically important
for determining whether something is open source or not).

>From the two examples above, it is clear that the Squeak License doesn't
pass the Open Source Institute's Open Source Definition, not the Free
Software Foundation's definition of Free Software, so it seems to be
inappropriate at the moment to label Squeak as open source. It's a pity,
because it is mostly a technicality and quite likely not what Apple meant,
but you want to be careful with language that is about legal things,
so I think that Squeak should not be recommended as open source.


-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg at cdegroot.com>
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