[ANN] Actalk on SM

Andrew C. Greenberg werdna at mucow.com
Tue Nov 26 04:04:10 UTC 2002


In the past we have used an LGPL/Squeal-L dual license, but only in the 
context of plugins.  I would strongly recommend Squeak-L or BSD for 
Smalltalk-based code.  While LGPL is suitable for API-based library 
calls, it is not particularly friendly towards traditional Object 
Oriented reuse.  As a practical matter, it might or might not create 
the distribution problems that GPL would create, but it risks creating 
an image where free reuse from the image can give rise to 
undistributable images.   That is solely a gut-reaction -- and if Serge 
insists, I will carefully review LGPL for use in this context.

However, I think the most Squeak-friendly approach would be to keep 
Smalltalk code either Squeak-L, BPL or freer (as in free of 
restrictions).  While LGPL can be workable, it is inconsistent with the 
culture of Smalltalk, which fosters broad, free reuse.  Ironically, 
neither LGPL nor GPL tend to facilitate same.  While GPL/LGPL is 
brilliant in its own right, and makes sense for the contexts in which 
it was designed to work (applications running on an operating 
system/libraries of code used for same), neither is particularly 
workable in the context of a smalltalk object image.


On Sunday, November 24, 2002, at 03:12 PM, Alan Kay wrote:

> Andrew Greenberg is our friendly Squeaker/lawyer. We don't ask him to 
> take official stands about this stuff, but he is very nice to provide 
> "unofficial" advice that has proved very helpful in the past. I would 
> be happy to go along with his suggestion for what the license should 
> be ....
>
> Cheers,
>
> Alan
>
> At 8:48 PM +0100 11/24/02, Serge Stinckwich wrote:
>> On Sun, 24 Nov 2002 09:35:57 -0800
>> 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. Squeak's license is much more open and
>>>  friendly. It allows people to make commercial products from it and
>>>  mainly asks that people post fundamental improvements to the system,
>>>  language, and software engineering.
>>>
>>>  Please ask Jean-Pierre (as I do now) to reconsider using something
>>>  like the Squeak license or the Berkeley license, etc. BTW, this is
>>>  how we got our MPEG kernel: it was GPL, but the original programmer
>>>  listened to our story and was willing to give us a special
>>>  non-polluting license.
>>
>> I don't want to open yet another can of worms about these annoying 
>> licenses issues, but we needed to
>> clarify all of these, before there is too much confusion ...
>>
>> In fact, Jean-Pierre let me choose the license for his code, but i 
>> don't want to pollute the Squeak source code.
>> Maybe i have to put the Actalk source code, until all these license 
>> problems are resolved, under the LGPL (like the StarBrowser).
>> LGPL has all the benefits of GPL without his viral nature.
>> I agree with you Alan, that we need to be very carefull with all of 
>> this.
>>
>> If there is some interests, i could try to summarize all the previous 
>> posts on the Squeak list and c.l.s newsgroup
>> about these issues in order to have a more clearer picture.
>>
>> --
>> Serge Stinckwich                                         -< )  
>> multiagent.com
>> Université de Caen>CNRS UMR 6072>GREYC>MAD                /~\  
>> squeak.org
>> http://www.iutc3.unicaen.fr/serge/                       (/  | 
>> zope.org
>> Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)] _|_/  
>> debian.org
>
>
> -- 
>
>




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