> > Please don't do this folks.  We have enough licensing 
> > issues already. Promiscuously cross-licensing like this
> > could kill either SM or Squeak, or both.
> > 
> Or neither. Most likely outcome, I believe.

I don't think so. I know that various people are already quite concerned
about changes to the current license and in fact I have got an inquiry by
someone who is quite likely to feed back into the community if it is "safe"
to stick to 3.4 in order to prevent any future licensing issues. The danger
is quite real as you get into random cross-licensing. As soon as (for
example) the first GPLed package is going to be widely used, _everything_
that uses any bit of it is GPLed. It's a spreading wave and the only way to
prevent that wave from happening is to fork on a clear path. And that has
the potential to kill either Squeak or SM. Or both.

> SqueakL is of course just as much a farce as anything else.

That may be quite true (though it surprises me to hear you say that - after
all, you are one of the people who are trying to change that license) but
it's besides the point Andrew is trying to make. The point being that random
cross-licensing is a recipe for legal desaster if you want to use it for
anything.

> Let's go back to this 'SqueakL only' rule. Now, I do agree that
> inserting GPL'ed code is tricky, but I don't think I was talking
> about that. I'm talking about free/unlicensed/pd/whatever code 
> (Andrew - could you be so kind and answer my question on the RB
> code?). What is the rationale for mandating the Squeak License
> here?

Simple - the rationale is to have only a single license you have to worry
about. If it's "free" then it should be really trivial for the authors to
tell us that we can use it under Squeak-L, right? In which case someone who
wants to use it has to look only at a single license and not three or four
or five with maybe slightly different (and possibly contradicting) clauses.
If anyone wants to use it under the terms of the original (or any other)
license she can still do so provided that the authors agree. But the point
is to have only a single license for the core part of the system in order to
keep this part reasonably simple in terms of what the rules are.

> SmaCC and the RB are extremely useful bits (well, bits...) of 
> code. They are clearly meant to be 'includable' in Squeak and
> similar systems.

See above - if that's the case, then it ought to be really simple for the
authors to say "okay, you can use it under the terms of Squeak-L". This will
keep the basics of Squeak under a uniquely formed license which seems like
the simplest solution to me.

Cheers,
  - Andreas