ask for APSL? for real this time?

goran.krampe at bluefish.se goran.krampe at bluefish.se
Thu Jan 8 13:11:48 UTC 2004


"Andrew C. Greenberg" <werdna at mucow.com> wrote:
> Were you my client, I would advise strongly against it.  It is a recipe=20=
> for confusion and later contentious dispute.  Sure, if code is "pure,"=20=
> in the sense of having no derivation whatsoever from the existing=20
> image, no problem.

Eh... that was what I said. Why are you then first advising strongly
against it, and then saying "no problem"? I am confused. I thought we
were in clear agreement earlier that dual licensing (MIT/SqueakL) for
contributions (not modifications) to base Squeak was appropriate since
we (at least earlier) had agreed that we wanted all base Squeak under
ONE license.

>  But how will we later take any significant block of=20=
> code and actually know what license applies, and to what portions of=20
> it?

For these added base package it is clear: SM tells you the license.

> Dual-licensing some of the code will not clarify the issue, nor will it=20=
> solve the problem, if there is any problem at all.

Lost me again. Earlier you argued very strongly for keeping base Squeak
under a single license - SqueakL - and now you argue that doing that
through dual licensing is the wrong way.

>  It would be far,=20
> far more sensible to start from scratch and rebuild a new Smalltalk. =20
> The fact that nobody has bothered has much to do with the fact that the=20=
> license isn't really a problem.

There are at least 3 efforts ongoing that I know of:
- Slate (though not motivated by license issues - it is a new
"Smalltalk" implementation under MIT)
- Squat (Craigs from-the-ground-up project with the license issue as a
base ingredience AFAICT)
- TFNR/partitioning-the-image (The community's effort of defining the
image in clear packages)

> Best solution is to involve Apple with a plan, AFTER WE OURSELVES FORM=20=
> A CONSENSUS what plan to undertake. 
[SNIP]

Personally I have a hard problem seeing how to deal with the other Big
Player. And I am still to be convinced that the work done there is not
theirs.

regards, Göran



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