Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus <schwa at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
> Fair enough, but that only addresses one of Cees' points.  It would be
> very difficult for anyone in the Squeak community who wrote (say) a
> replacement VM to argue that they had done it in a "clean room".
> Therefore, a rewrite doesn't really buy us much.  Right?

I like Colins answer - if the implementation is based on new ideas, it
obviously isn't copied, so no real risk. 

Also note this wouldn't happen as a project, it would happen as a
natural process, if we change what kinds of things we encourage and
accept.

And another point is that if we start paying attention to how our work
gets licensed, then every new component will be less at risk. Currently,
the Squeak license issue is an all or nothing proposition. If someone
claims the compiler (for example) has problems, it isn't separate from
the rest. But if we end up with a squeak that's even just 50% made of
clean-room implementations, and someone questions one of the parts, we
can always dump only that part and replace it with something new.

Daniel