At 06:03 PM 25/03/2003 -0600, John Brant wrote:
>My biggest problem with the Squeak License is that it is too Apple centric.
>By publishing my stuff under the Squeak-L, I'm not licensing it, Apple is. I
>don't even know if I can publish something under the Squeak-L since I can't
>represent Apple and the license is between the end user and Apple, not the
>end user and myself. Furthermore, the license protects Apple, but what about
>me...

(I am, obviously, not a lawyer)

It sounds to me like the license protects both Apple and its licensors 
('collectively referred to as "Apple"').

I'm not sure that not being able to represent Apple is valid. It's a little 
fuzzy to me, although of course you could make it available under a 
modified license as long as it's no less protective of Apple's rights, etc. 
Perhaps that would be a good direction to go in clarifying Squeak-L. In 
fact, naively reading it, that sounds like one could relicense altering the 
export clause to be more sensible (obey the laws of your country), since 
that wouldn't affect Apple in any way.

Perhaps it would be a good investment for the Squeak community to actually 
consult a real, paid, lawyer for the sake of clarifying what it means to 
put something under Squeak-L, what's involved in doing it, etc.

>One other thing that bothers me about the Squeak-L is the part about making
>the modified software publicly available. I don't mind the idea of making
>your modifications available for others to use, but since there are no
>definitions of terms like "modification", someone could argue that by
>performing a garbage collection you are modifying a method -- before the
>method had a bit pattern of x, but now it has a bit pattern of y; clearly
>the method was modified.

Oh, come on. But even if it were interpreted that way, so what? At the 
worst that would mean that you had modified all of Squeak, and thus had to 
make it available. Say, by putting a link to it.

It seems to me (recalling that I'm not a lawyer) that if you put it out and 
allow people to use it any way they like, that any way they like ought to 
include being able to put it under Squeak-L and include it in the Squeak 
image (assuming Squeak-L allows them to do that). You should probably 
somehow limit your own liability, but I don't think that would particularly 
affect the matter.

>BTW, what is meant by publishing something under both the MIT license and
>the Squeak license? How does that work? Does a user pick a license that they
>like, or are they somehow combined? If they are combined, what about
>conflicting items?

A user picks a license they like. Terms can contradict all they like.

For example, users of VisualWorks can use it under the terms of the NC 
license, which restricts their usage. Or they can use it under one of the 
commercial licenses, which doesn't restrict usage (or at least has 
different, presumably looser, restrictions) but requires them to pay Cincom 
money. Same goes for anything else.



--
Alan Knight [|], Cincom Smalltalk Development
knight at acm.org
aknight at cincom.com
http://www.cincom.com/smalltalk

"The quoting of an aphorism, like the angry barking of a dog or the smell 
of overcooked broccoli, rarely indicates that something helpful is about to 
happen" -- Lemony Snicket.