ask for APSL? for real this time?

Cees de Groot cg at tric.nl
Tue Jan 6 09:08:36 UTC 2004


Lex Spoon <squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org> said:
>There has been a lot of discussion about Squeak licensing, and most
>proposals require that Apple re-release the part of Squeak it owned
>under a better license.  How about we go ahead and do that step, so that
>further steps may be enabled?  Is there any reason not to?
>
I have asked for that about a year ago and got a clear and resounding
'No' as an answer from Apple. 

The only way this is going to move forward is if SqC steps in and
juggle their contacts at Apple, and judging by past experience I don't
feel that this is going to happen any time soon. And even then you are
still left with a legal mess (unlike the current situation, which is
entirely clear and acceptable to lots of parties) with respect to
non-Apple contributions done under the SqL. I can imagine getting Apple
around, but Disney? Forget it. Just forget about it.

>I grow increasingly frustrated that Squeak is not included in open
>source distributions due to the situation with OSI.  OSI will likely
>never be convinced by arguments about the spirit of the license, and
>without OSI's support, we are likely to continue to have trouble with
>other groups such as Debian.
>
Yup. So you work around it. I can install daemontools, djbdns, qmail
under Debian by apt-getting an installer script, which fetches,
patches, compiles, and installs qmail from original sources for me
(these products have restrictions on redistribution which make them
non-DFSG compliant, for entirely different reasons than Squeak but with
completely the same result: non-inclusion). These packages aren't
included in Debian, but I could not care less as long as some simple
steps are all that's needed.

Personally, I think that any time spent talking about the SqueakL is
time lost. If you really want to include Squeak in Debian, for example,
make that fetch/install script, wrap up a .deb for it, and submit it to
Debian. I give you a 90% chance it will be accepted, and a 0.1% chance
that you will ever get Squeak under a different license.

-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.tric.nl     <cg at tric.nl>
tric, the new way           helpdesk/ticketing software, VoIP/CTI, 
                            web applications, custom development




More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list