Sublicensing

Daniel Vainsencher danielv at netvision.net.il
Fri Aug 15 23:25:30 UTC 2003


Hi Alan.

I see no need for Haim to look at the license, since it is quite likely
to be free enough as defined by the three bodies usually treated as
authoritative on this matter - OSI, FSF and Debian.

APSL 2.0 is a revision of the APSL 1.2, which was OSI approved. 2.0 is
FSF approved, but not yet OSI approved. Neither of these is identical
with it being Debian approved, but in all likeliness, this license will
be deemed fine by all of the above. We can wait for a short while if we
wish to make sure.

My (layman's) impressions from reading the license
(http://www.opensource.apple.com/apsl/2.0.txt) -
In general, it says that the covered code must be kept under the same
license, and all modifications also (SqueakL theoretically lets one
sublicense, but this is dangerous). The covered code can be combined
with code governed by other licenses (without contamination).

The license is definitely not BSDish - it is about 15 times too long,
and far less permissive.

[Andreas: FSF free doesn't mean my free]
Note that the GPL is considered free but it is also specialized. The FSF
also considers many other kinds of licenses free, and their definition
of free is quite similar to what you would expect (appended below). It
doesn't mean you can do anything you want with the code, for that you
want MIT/BSD style licenses.

Getting back to the point at hand, I personally like the APSL 2.0 much
better than SqueakL, and more importantly, it would let us play freely
with the rest of the open source community. While a BSD/MIT license
would be much better, having Squeak under the APSL 2.0 would be a Good
Thing.

Daniel

FSF's def of free software (http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)
"More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of
the software:
# The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
# The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs
(freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
# The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor
(freedom 2).
# The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to
the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to
the source code is a precondition for this."

Note that this doesn't mention the freedom to recombine software
arbitrarily... you get that from very few licenses.

Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
> IANAL, but I am slightly sceptical about what it means that APSL 2.0 is now
> a "Free Software License". Given FSFs particular interpretations of "free"
> it may turn out that for quite a number of users that "free" APSL 2.0 may
> turn out to be significantly less free of restrictions than current
> Squeak-L.
> 
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
> 
> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> > [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> > Behalf Of Marcus Denker
> > Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 11:57 PM
> > To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> > Subject: Re: Sublicensing
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, Aug 15, 2003 at 02:45:36PM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
> > > Hi Daniel --
> > > 
> > > I forget what licence Apple is currently using for their opensource 
> > > stuff, but I've been told it is like BSD. Could you have 
> > your lawyer 
> > > look at it? It might be easiest to get Apple to relicense Squeak 
> > > using a model they currently use, if it works OK for us. If this 
> > > looks good, I'm happy to ask Steve to let us do it.
> > > 
> > Apple just released a new version of the Apple Public Source
> > License (APSL 2.0). Seems to be that they worked closely with
> > the both the FSF and the OSI to make sure that everything
> > is perfect:
> > 
> http://www.opensource.apple.com/news/2.0-announce.html
> 
>  Apple is pleased to announce the 2.0 version of the Apple Public Source
>  License.  It improves upon the OSI-approved APSL 1.2 by conforming to the
>  definition of Free Software Licenses, as certified by the Free Software
>  Foundation. We are grateful to Richard Stallman for his many helpful
>  comments in this process.   APSL 2.0 is also being submitted to the Open
>  Source Initiative to certify its continued compliance with the Open Source
>  Definition. 
> 
> Should be perfect for Squeak. 
> 
>    Marcus
> 
> 
> -- 
> Marcus Denker marcus at ira.uka.de  -- Squeak! http://squeak.de



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