[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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