On 6/26/06, Hilaire Fernandes <hilaire at ext.cri74.org> wrote:
> I am frowarding this answer from Chao-Kuei Hung as I am not sure it will
> get in the Squeak-dev mailing list.
>
He brings up valid points, supporting my assertion that this is a PR
issue. Note that I am just analyzing here, not judging. PR issues can
be showstoppers just as much as technical issues.

However, it means that any activity around this is very much *not* a
direct scratch-your-own-itch thing. And it is therefore not surprising
that it is hard to raise support.

Therefore, what needs to be done is to couple this to a
scratch-your-own-itch thing. This is the main reason I'm advocating
Craig's Spoon work - it holds the promise of solving a lot of the
current issues around the monolithic character of Squeak, and it would
be trivial to check the minimal code base against Squeak 1.1 and fix
license-technical deficiencies.

Personally, I'm not going to lift a finger to help re-licensing
projects that take 3.9 as a starting point. It's not that I wouldn't
like to see it done, but I just don't have the copious spare time and
I have my doubts of the feasibility of doing this as a volunteer
effort.

As Craig said, we (SqF Board) are going to discuss various approaches
with Dan Ravicher July 5th. We'll have a more informed idea of what is
possible after that conversation, I hope. However, at the moment I
think there are two realistic approaches:
- Take Squeak 1.1 and declare that the new main line of development;
- Do a license check on the Spoon code and declare that the new main
line of development.
In both cases, we'd start with a "deficient" Squeak and work upwards.
The third option, sort out the mess that's 3.9 (licensing-wise), seems
to be not very viable. It's a lot of work to start with, and the
outcomes are unsure.

There's also a fourth option - VRI doing a lot of work to bring Squeak
1.1 to a license-clean level that can support Open Croquet... Anyone
from VRI listening here? I'm curious as to what their plans are now
that they "own" Squeak 1.1...