Daniel Vainsencher <danielv at netvision.net.il> wrote:
> Peter Crowther <peter at crowther.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> > Even if a complete Squeak replacement was to be created, proving that it was
> > clean (given Smalltalk's famous ease of viewing of source code) would be a
> > stupendously difficult task.  I think re-licensing would be the better
> > option.
> Anything we can get relicensed, we should. What we can't relicense, we
> can rewrite.
> 
> > I also have an opposed view on what kind of license should be used, whether
> > in re-licensing or in a new version.  I think it should be as open as
> > possible.  MIT would be ideal.  
> Seems like we're all in violent agreement so far...
> 
> Any dissenting views?
> 

I'm not clear on what the big deal about APSL versus MIT is.  What am I
missing?  From my reading and from what I hear, APSL is fine for all
reasonable futures of Squeak I'd like to see.

Realistically, Apple is very unlikely to put Squeak 1.0 (or whatever
version it was) under anything but APSL.  This is a license that Apple
has intensely considered, and they've even released updates to it.  They
be suspicious of any tweaks we request, and it will lose them some face
if they release different open source projects under different licenses.
 Further, we don't have much leverage, anyway!  The best we can hope
for, from a negotiating point of view, is that Apple makes an APSL v.3
that solves whatever problems we have with it, and then get them to
release Squeak-1.0 (or whatever version it was) under *that*.  Are there
any problems with APSLv2 that are so bad we want to lobby for a v3
before putting Squeak under it?  I don't think so.

As for rewrites, I am unclear on what is really possible.  If we remove
the Apple and Disney bits from underneath Squeak one by one, that's
still a series of modifications.  Blah, it makes my head hurt.  Let me
just toss out that what you are really talking about, as I understand,
is not making everything clearly free, but instead making everything
owned by human individuals instead of by corporations.  This seems like
a useful property, but let it not pass that humans can be stubborn about
their code just as well as corporations.  If anything, I'm tempted to
press in a slightly different direction: give full rights to
SqueakFoundation, in addition to maintining rights for the author.  That
way SF could make any future license change in one swoop.  But anyway,
it still doesn't seem clear what is possible in this regard.


Lex