On Mon, Apr 29, 2002 at 02:32:59AM -0400, Lex Spoon wrote:
> cg at cdegroot.com (Cees de Groot) wrote:
> 
> > >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.
> 
> Why do these guys get to define "open source"?  

Because the term (capitalized or not) wasn't in common use before they
coined it to differentiate it from Free Software.

Compare to a C++ person saying, "Why do these Smalltalk guys get to define
object-oriented?"  :-)

> In the common parlance,
> you don't need as many restrictions as they require.  If you can distribute
> the program widely, if you have all the source code, and if you can modify the source
> code and redistribute it, then the program is open source.  It's not
> necessarily OSI-approved or FSF-approved, but this says more about those
> institutions than about Squeak.

No, it says more about the current legal climate.  Organizations
concerned with software freedom retain lawyers to ensure that the
definitions that they come up with are legally defensible, and that
they don't have loopholes that malicious entities can exploit to call
their strings-attached software Open or Free.

Anyone from the Open Source or Free Software camp who becomes familiar
with the workings of the Squeak community would agree that we operate
in a manner consistent with the ideals that inspire them (share code,
etc.)  However, a line in the sand needs to be drawn so that entities
(might as well name them) like Microsoft cannot release code that
meets the letter of their definition, but actually restricts the
freedom of users.  Both OSI and FSF retain lawyers to make sure that
such loopholes do not exist.

What if Microsoft was identified in Squeak's license instead of Apple,
and Squeak became a viable competitor to their future software
offerings for, say, media authoring.  Are you confident that their
lawyers couldn't find a way to twist the wording of the SqueakL?
Do you think that their lawyers wouldn't be at our throats instantly?  

Check on Slashdot for a discussion of the license that the latest
version of Lucent's Plan 9 has just been released under.  In my
opinion, it is a good thing that the Open Source Definition excludes
sorta-free licenses like this one.

Joshua

> 
> 
> -Lex