Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org> wrote:
> Please be careful with this. The GPL license is a "polluting" license
> that claims to turn anything in which it is embedded into GPL that
> can't be used commercially.

I agree with Alan on this in the context of Squeak but perhaps Alan's
choice of words here are a bit misleading. I would rather say that:

"The GPL license restrict you so that you can only embed GPLed software
in software also covered by the GPL license or a license being a
superset thereof."

My point being is that a license can not "claim" anything about other
licenses in the sense that it can "pollute" or "spread" or anything.
Just like any license it has rules and you need to follow them to be in
compliance - that is all.

Anyway, going back to the subject a bit deeper: In regards to monolithic
systems like Squeak the problem is that when code is in the image it can
very much be considered to be "linked" with the image and thus the image
turns into a "derived work".

Anyway, two quotes from Andrew Greenberg on the subject:

"According to RMS, can't even distribute non-GPL code mixed with GPL 
code unless the entirety of the image is GPL.  While a reasonable 
advocate might disagree with RMS and Eben as to the scope and effect of 
GPL as applied to Squeak, their "interpretation" is by itself a pretty 
persuasive argument that the license is unworkable for Smalltalkers."

...and:

"I am an IP and Patent lawyer.  After a careful analysis, and extensive 
discussions with FSF and RMS on the subject matter, it is my present 
view that GPL is unsuitable for use with a monolithic object image 
system unless all code of that system is to be GPL'd.  While LGPL can 
be made to work for things like plugins, GPL simply is "too viral" to 
work in an open community such as ours."

And of course, I am not a lawyer, yaddayadda...

I am still wondering about what happens if the distributable is not an
image - for example - the packages we currently distribute are in
sourcecode form and get compiled/linked when installed. I have asked
Andrew for some insight in this but AFAIK he hasn't yet posted his
thoughts on that.

Do note however that the Squeak community is much more of a
"BSD/MIT"-like community in the sense that we typically share our source
with each other under SqueakL possibly combined with BSD/MIT or similar.

My personal rule goes like this:
- Anything I want to see in "base Squeak" (earlier this has meant the
official image, now in the package world this probably will mean "in any
of the base packages") I release under the SqueakL.
- Generally I would also duallicense under an MIT-license (BSD without
the advertising clause)

Choosing SqueakL is because we want to have everything in base Squeak
under that license so that we have a reasonable chance in the future to
perhaps change it and also make it easier for ourselves. We don't want a
big mess of multiple licenses in the base Squeak.

Adding MIT is because I personally don't like parts of SqueakL - for
example, I am not a US citizen and do not want the US government to
decide for me who get's to use my software.

regards, Göran