Jon Hylands wrote:

> On Sat, 13 Mar 2004 14:54:20 +0100, "rrobbes" <rrobbes at info.unicaen.fr>

> > Is the code lying down somewhere (and adequatly licensed),
> > so that someone could do the porting effort ?
>
> Well, I have the code

More importantly: do you have the copyright?

> and since The Object People doesn't exist anymore,

doesn't mean that the code is in the public domain

> and this was never an official product that they were selling or offering
> to clients,

doesn't matter at all

> and its written for a Smalltalk that is no longer available, I
> don't see any problems...

Copyright issues can become very nasty, as the SCO case shows. Someone had the 
rights to that code and in all probability still holds it. Companies are 
owned by people, and even if a company vanishes, that company's assets are 
kept or reassigned. If the proposition is to include something from an 
external source in Squeak, then we should make sure we have a bulletproof 
license that let's us do with it what we want to do. To do otherwise leads to 
incalculabe financial risks, because the copyright owner may one day - quite 
rightfully - decide to exert his rights and claim damages for unauthorized 
use.

Regards, Lothar