I personally think the Squeak License is "good enough".  However, 
obviously others disagree.

Sounds like a business opportunity to me, for any mid-size to larger 
company.  Here is the opportunity:

Sell a Squeak distribution, together with an indemnification contract.  
That way, for those who think the Squeak License is not good enough for 
use in their business, they are indemnified via a third party.  That 
gives them somebody to sue if it turns out that the Squeak License is 
not good enough.

For the company doing the indemnifying, if you believe that the Squeak 
License is "good enough" and without risk, here is your opportunity to 
sell Squeak distros at a healthy profit, just by adding an 
indemnification contract when people get their distro from you.

Sounds like easy money to me-- potentially two or three thousand dollars 
per distribution (which would be about half or less of what VisualAge or 
VisualWorks cost).  But, whoever does it would have to have deep enough 
pockets to convince their customers that the indemnification contract is 
worth more than the paper it is written on.  So, that counts most of us out.

Nevin


> I agree that a general (preferably not country specific) professional 
> legal analysis of the license would be useful.
>
> I think the points of interest would be:
> - Risks in it for users, developers and redistributors
> - Analysis of its interaction with other code: fixes to existing 
> classes vs. separate packages, and MIT vs. Squeak-L.
> - Analysis of the strategy I proposed a while ago for living with and 
> eventually replacing SqueakL. The strategy is: dual license all new 
> code as MIT/SqueakL, try to replace subsystems rather than fix them. 
> If its bad, propose an alternative strategy.
>
> Then the company in question should decide whether this is sufficient 
> for it, to pay a local lawyer for the details specific to its situation.
>
> If we do this, it is important to get it from someone that is already 
> familiar with open source licenses, so the people Ron contacted would 
> be a good starting point (if it is beyond what they want to do 
> pro-bono, they can probably recommend someone).
>
> Daniel
>
> Cees De Groot wrote:
>
>> On 12/20/05, Stéphane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse at univ-savoie.fr> wrote:
>>
>>> Now I would like to know if this is possible that we ask andrew and
>>> the lawyer that ron contact for the cryptographic
>>> packages to write down their analysis and that we publish it on the
>>> squeak web site.
>>>
>>
>> I think that is a good idea. Not that any surprises will pop up - the
>> issues with the Squeak License have been hashed out many times,
>> including a couple of times in discussions with Andrew Greenberg, who
>> *is* a lawyer ;)
>>
>> However - these are US lawyers. You don't mention what country this
>> company lives in, but their analysis may or may not apply to local
>> laws. So, if they are really serious, due dilligence would demand:
>> - a translation of the license into the local language by a licensed
>> legal translator;
>> - an evaluation of the result by a local IP lawyer.
>> But that one should do for any license.
>>
>> BTW - if you think it's a good idea, you can pass them my contact
>> details for any immediate questions. I think between the SqF board
>> members, I've been doing the most legal work including more hours on
>> the Squeak license than I care to count ;-).
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Cees
>>
>