On Tue, Mar 16, 2004 at 04:49:12PM -0800, Tim Rowledge wrote:
> Bert Freudenberg <bert at impara.de> wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Thanks! I posted a reply (in particular to counter this dramatically  
> > distorted view:  
> > http://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/2004/debian-edu-200403/ 
> > msg00204.html).
> >
> What amazing utterances. You'd think maybe they'd consider reading the
> licence before trashing the project. Perhaps you'd like to point out
> that squeak is most certainly free, not property of disney, exxon, the
> illuminati nor any other siblings of satan.
> 
> And as for the idea that he'd never heard of alan before now.. well.
> How about Babbage? K&R? Papert? Wilson?
> 
> tim
Unfortunately, though the utterances that started the debian-edu
thread were pretty inane, there is a real issue.  As flagged on the
squeak licensing page, there is an indemnification clause which makes
Debian nervous and makes the license fail Debian's free software
guidelines.

As a Debian user, I would love to see squeak in the main Debian
distribution, but my understanding is that this issue is a
show-stopper.

Arguing that the clause will never apply doesn't really help;
obviously, the lawyers who drafted the license thought there was a
point in inserting the clause.

I think Debian is right on both counts: Debian should not assume the
risk of redistributing the software, and software that requires the
user to assume such a risk is not free.