"Peter Crowther" <peter at crowther.demon.co.uk> wrote:
[SNIP]
> Indeed.  The problem is that the current IP situation (generally, not just
> Squeak) is causing FUD* on a very large scale.  Consider the original driver
> for this: Debian will not even include Squeak in the non-free part of their
> distribution, despite the license being - in many ways - considerably less
> practically restrictive than GPL.  Whilst we cannot eliminate the FUD
> entirely, as wording is always open to interpretation, we can attempt to
> reduce it, as Alan continues:

I would hardly say that Debian's decision is based on FUD. If that is
what you mean.
They got scared of a clause, and for all I know for good reasons.

> > As I said once before: at this point, we need better lines of code
> > more than better lines of license! However, I think there are a few
> > things in SqueakL -- the Apple license (the only one that obtains in
> > my opinion) -- that could be removed to make it smaller and simpler,
> > and this might be possible to do.
> 
> A simpler license needs to communicate fewer notions and therefore has fewer
> opportunities for misinterpretation.  Alan, if you can somehow get Apple to
> simplify the current Squeak license, you will be doing many of us a great
> service.  How can we (individually or collectively) help, if at all?
> 
> A single license for all parts of Squeak, *almost no matter what that single
> license contains*, also leads to the overall licensing situation

Again, "all parts of Squeak" demands the attention of Disney too (and
all the other contributors, but we can probably handle that).

I am still waiting for some clarification on this part - I am still
rather convinced that Disney has the copyright for all work produced at
Disney. If there are contracts or something that I don't know about that
makes this NOT so then we are *surely* in a much better situation than I
thought! But until Alan or someone else clarifies this I assume it is
simply false.

> communicating fewer notions than multiple licenses based around that single
> license.  There are therefore fewer opportunities for misinterpretation -
> which I [mis?]interpret as Goran's point about Ian's Squeak-L-derived / GPL
> dual license for the UNIX VM.  Fortunately, it is easier to ask Ian for an
> exception than Apple - and don't say he didn't warn you (see the warning on
> http://www-sor.inria.fr/~piumarta/cv/index.html for details).

Well, it wasn't my main point. But it sure is *a* point. :-) My main
point is that we have multiple licenses instead of a single one. And it
wasn't a result of a decision of the community or anything.

> 		- Peter
> 
> *Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

regards, Göran