[squeak-dev] Re: what is holding back Smalltalk?

Bert Freudenberg bert at freudenbergs.de
Fri Nov 21 14:11:43 UTC 2008


On 21.11.2008, at 15:02, Casimiro de Almeida Barreto wrote:

> Randal L. Schwartz escreveu:
>> I presume by "these sorts of responses" you mean Paolo's response  
>> to me. My
>> response is driven by my responsibility as being an elected member  
>> of the
>> leadership team, to ensure that Squeak 4.0 will have a completely  
>> clean
>> license. We worked very hard over the last few years to track down  
>> every
>> contribution to squeak since its beginning, obtaining legal  
>> documents updating
>> the license, and it would be a shame if a mistakenly derived work  
>> from GNU
>> Smalltalk were to taint the distribution once again.
>>
>> I'm serious about this, and will continue to bring it up in every  
>> appropriate
>> context. I wish this weren't the case: I pleaded with Paolo to dual  
>> license
>> the Smalltalk code in GNU Smalltalk under the MIT license so that  
>> people can
>> freely examine the implementation and use as is or derive from it to
>> contribute to the squeak project. So far, these requests have been  
>> declined,
>> albeit understandably.
>>
> Hello Randall,
>
> Sorry if this question bother you, but I'm not expert in legal issues
> and I'm used to work with GPL and LGPL software.
>
> I understand that Squeak was first issued under Apple licensing  
> system.
> Then, last year it was decided to migrate everything to the MIT  
> license.
> But for people not acquainted with licensing systems, the differences
> may not clear. What are the incompatibilities between MIT licenses and
> GPL/LGPL licenses?


There is no incompatibility between MIT and GPL (although there is  
between Apache and GPL, and parts of Squeak are still under ASL 2.0).

But GPL is viral (and LGPL too if you rip out code and not just link  
to it) so it infects other code used together with the GPLed code. We  
do not want Squeak to become GPL licensed so we need to be careful  
what code to let in.


- Bert -





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