Greetings;

Agreed that the vast majority of code is *not* owned by Apple.  But not 
having an in-force license specifying terms of use of non-Apple code is a 
liability in itself.  Without a license covering new submissions, the 
entire code base is exposed to downstream IP claims by contributors.  (Bill 
Gates funded the start of Microsoft playing this game.)

The bottom line is that there is no "Squeak" license per se.  The only 
thing Squeak has is a license that covers Apple's contribution to the code 
base.

Consider this; a court might look at the lack of a competing license to 
Apple's license, and determine since no action was made to protect 
downstream submissions, all code could be (by default) property of 
Apple.  (In other words, one must have a competing license to even be 
granted a hearing in court.)

Would the responsible parties in Sq C please move on this?

Regards;

Bill Cole



>Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2003 18:03:07 -0800
>From: Alan Ferguson <jit at memeticdrift.net>
>To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
>  <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Subject: Re: Freeing Squeak (license-wise)
>Message-ID: <3E71385B.4070405 at memeticdrift.net>
>References: <0HBO002V8G57ZZ at mxout3.netvision.net.il>
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>         <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Message: 14
>
>  From the squeak license...
>
>    "You may distribute and sublicense such Modified Software only under 
> the terms
>    of ___a valid, binding license___ that makes no representations or 
> warranties on
>    behalf of Apple, and is no less protective of Apple and Apple's rights 
> than
>    this License. "
>
>That seems like the key phrase but It seems to be a large majority of the 
>code base
>now does not belong to apple, but what license is it?  My suggestion
>is to clarify what the new contributed software has been/will be licensed
>under and leave the historical Apple license alone perhaps with a note that
>the fonts in question have been removed. Make the curent squeak-l license
>apply to a small a corner of squeak as we can. (I'm not sure exactly how the
>"Exhibit A" clause should be interpreted, as my brain stack faults
>when I think about it. I see it the way out is that it's highly unlikely
>that distributeing software patches independent of apple's origional code
>and containing no part of apple's code is a "sublicence")
>
>That way we minimise the risk of noisily opening Pandora's worm can and waking
>a sleepy dog.