Squeak Licence and Debian and Apple and Skolelinux

goran.krampe at bluefish.se goran.krampe at bluefish.se
Wed Mar 24 20:03:10 UTC 2004


Hi all!

Alan Kay <Alan.Kay at squeakland.org> wrote:
> 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

Hmmm, even though I have been involved in my fair share of license
discussions - and nothing has ever come out of it except for better
understanding of the situation - it seems that this issue shouldn't be
dismissed in this manner.

There are two facts here that most of us know:

1. We tried SqueakL with the OSI guys (their mailinglist used for that)
and they rejected it based primarily IIRC on the export clause
(discriminating) and the Font stuff (even though the latter should be
easily fixed).

2. Debian rejected SqueakL because of the indemnification clause.

Now, IMHO both of these organisations are worth respect and are
valuable. It is a pity SqueakL stumbles - but AFAICT there is hardly
anything we can do about it - because frankly and unfortunately, I don't
think we will ever get it changed. Yes, I am normally an optimist but in
this case, sorry.

regards, Göran

PS. But in Debian we can make an installer package to "go around it". I
have posted on that subject before.



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