Squeak Licence and Debian and Apple and Skolelinux

Alan Kay Alan.Kay at squeakland.org
Wed Mar 24 19:35:38 UTC 2004


Ross --

The problem is that all of this is essentially ridiculous, because 
there is no way to prevent anyone from suing anyone, regardless of 
the disclaimers. So coming up with doomsday scenarios is not at all 
helpful, and simply puts more of a scare into people who are easily 
scared.

None of the licenses that are accepted by the OSI give anyone 
protection from any suit.

In any case, it would be nicer if the BS was BS that scared people 
less regardless of the actual facts and actual legalities.

I hereby (legally) resign from this thread.

Alan

At 11:21 AM -0800 3/24/04, Ross Boylan wrote:
>A couple other points have occurred to me.  I am not a lawyer.
>
>First, the good news: In
>http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/debian-legal-200110/msg00028.html
>Apple says it can't relicense because the fonts are from a third
>party.  But the indemnification clause, along with much of the
>license, refers specifically to Apple.  So Apple should be free to
>change it.  This would leave the font problem, but not the liability
>problem.
>
>It might be worth thinking if there's a way that people could license
>their stuff so as to automatically strip those clauses away if Apple
>is agreeable.
>
>Second, the bad news: I originally thought the indemnification clause
>only put you on the hook for your modifications; the email cited above
>sort of reads that way.  However, read literally, the clause makes
>anyone accepting it liable for *any* modification.  Hence my musings
>in my previous message about how much of squeak is considered
>"modified."
>
>It might also be worth stating explicitly that the indemnification
>clause involves more than money; I spoke in terms of money since it
>was the most salient issue and the most convenient short-hand.  For
>example, cooperating in defense could involve spending time, making
>records available, etc.
>
>I haven't studied the newer Apple Open source license in any detail,
>so don't have much of an opinion on it.  I do know that, at least
>initially, it included some items that disturbed some open source
>types (unless I'm getting this confused with Netscape's licensing...).
>
>I can't resist sharing another outlandish lawsuit scenario: The
>WestWorld scenario.  Disney opens an animatronic theme park powered by
>squeak and the robots go crazy and kill all the guests.  Disney sues
>everyone ever involved in squeak.


-- 



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