[License]: need expert [CSOTD newbie technique tip included!]

Andrew C. Greenberg werdna at mucow.com
Mon Feb 11 02:50:35 UTC 2002


On Sunday, February 10, 2002, at 10:59 AM, Noel J. Bergman wrote:

> Perhaps Andrew C. Greenberg would care to weigh in on the issue.

I hope I will not be understood when I say that all this has been raised 
before and discussed in depth.  I have written extensively on the 
virtues and failings of Squeak-L, and the uselessness of other, more 
"traditional," viral licenses for monolithic images.  For full 
disclosure purposes, my ideology for free licenses is far closer to BSD 
than to GPL, but this is not the reason I diss GPL for Smalltalk.

Squeak-L can only be changed if Apple cooperates, for, like it or not, 
they own the core.  I would love to see us do that, and will agressively 
and actively cooperate in that project.  Apple *DOES* presently have an 
OSI-authorised license, the APSL, and I suspect they can be talked into 
relaxing the anti-OSI provisions to, at least, the APSL2 compromises 
they agreed to for Darwin.  But realistically, we must accept that we 
will NEVER get more or less than Apple is willing to give for the core.

Hey, guys, its time to get rid of the Apple fonts.

The only thing worse than Squeak-L would be a multi-fragmented 
collection of "improved" licenses, making it impossible for us ever to 
repair the Squeak universe.  I continue to urge patience in the craft, 
and ask all who contribute to continue to contribute to offer their 
content under either Squeak-L, or a more liberal, BSD-style license, not 
because of my ideology, but because I believe nothing else would make it 
possible for us to put "Humpty Dumpty back together again."  Forking 
licenses would be worse than forking Squeak.

That said, I have explained my reasons and justifications for these 
conclusions in depth in the past, and addressed all or most of these 
issues --particularly the lack of OSI-ness and Debian-ness-- at length.  
Accordingly, I am not really all that interested in revisiting them once 
more.

Clearly, this issue should be a priority for FSF.  I would be ecstatic 
if we could get Apple simply to assign its interest in Squeak-L to FSF, 
and would start with that begging.  Failing that, I would begin begging 
for liberalization of the license.  I am optimistic we can solve the 
problem, but I would beg the community to remain patient.




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