license revocability (was "Closure Compiler")

Allen Wirfs-Brock Allen_Wirfs-Brock at Instantiations.com
Thu Mar 27 17:45:04 UTC 2003


The interpretation of the word "product" was an on-going topic of debate at 
Tektronix.  There were strong indications that the Xerox PARC management 
who had the license drafted intended it to have a quite limited 
meaning.  (Consider what constituted a typical "product" of Tektronix, HP, 
DEC, or Apple (or Xerox, for that matter) in 1980).

Eventually, that management and interest in Smalltalk left Xerox. My pure 
speculation is that Apple based the Squeak License on the literal meaning 
of the word and a contemporary understanding of software "products".

A possibly related note.  I have a vague recollection of a conversation 
with Adele Goldburg sometime in the mid-90's where she asserted that she, 
personally, had the rights to Smalltalk-80 and was willing to relicense 
it.  My recollection may be totally wrong or out of context, but it does 
suggest an avenue that anyone considering a new Smalltalk implementation 
might want to investigate.

Allen Wirfs-Brock

At 08:07 PM 3/26/2003 -0500, Andrew C. Greenberg wrote:
>Interesting.  This may give some insight into the overtly Apple-ish tinge 
>of Squeak-L.  Perhaps that language is necessary to assure that Squeak 
>remains a "product of Apple's?"  Perhaps we need to assure that this 
>remains so?
>
>On Wednesday, March 26, 2003, at 04:50 PM, Paul McCullough wrote:
>
>> > From my understanding it was without fee or royalty?
>>
>>While I don't have a copy of the license before me, I gave many, many 
>>talks about our system at Tektronix. The more-or-less wording of the 
>>license granted to the four companies was: In exchange for reviewing the 
>>draft of the book and implementing the virtual machine, licensee is 
>>hereby granted an irrevocable world-wide, non-exclusive, royalty-free 
>>license to distribute the Smalltalk-80 system by incorporating into a 
>>product of the licensee.
>>
>>paul



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