ask for APSL? for real this time?

Peter Crowther peter at ozzard.org
Tue Jan 6 23:35:22 UTC 2004


> From: [...] Lex Spoon
> > 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 don't understand.  How can having part of it be APSL make things be
> worse?
>
> I have been assuming that all the main contributors would be willing to
> re-release under any open source license you name.  We can then strip
> out any code whose authors we cannot track down, and voila -- APSL
> Squeak.  It is not even clear that we need Disney involved, since all
> updates from SqC-at-Disney were posted externally and since Disney
> doesn't seem to care.

That's exactly Cees' point.  It *isn't* clear.  If Apple releases under APSL
and Disney is silent, and there is a sniff that there might be a few lines
of code left in a refactored method somewhere in the image that might have
originated from SqC at Disney, then what is the license on the image?  As a
potential software vendor, or a distributor, what is my potential liability
in using Squeak?  Well... it's unclear.  It *might* be covered by APSL, and
so it *might* be OK to put in the Debian distro.  Then again, it might not.
Who's to know?  *Is* it safe to distribute as part of Debian?  Or is it
tainted by the Big Mouse, and is the Squeak-L still the applicable license?

If I know that the license is Squeak-L, I can evaluate my risks.

> However, it would be helpful for the future of Squeak to have an
> unambiguously open source license.

Agree entirely.

> If Apple goes along, we can make this happen.

Disagree strongly.  The reverse is true: if Apple *does not* go along, we
*cannot* make this happen.  But even if Apple do go along, we *may not* be
able to make this happen.  It depends on the good will of other
contributors, notably (but not only) Disney.

		- Peter




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