On Mon, Dec 7, 2015 at 11:17 PM, Martin Bähr
<mbaehr at email.archlab.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
> Excerpts from EuanM's message of 2015-12-07 13:24:49 +0100:
>> If we use LGPL'd Smalltalk from Gnu-Smalltalk, we may not close the
>> LGPL'd portion of the code.
>>
>> Was anyone planning on closing the Unicode parts of Cuis/Pharo/Squeak?
>>
>> It *is* an issue with Dolphin's .exe facility, which is one of my own
>> personal use-cases.  But for Pharo/Squeak/Cuis it seems to be a
>> non-issue.  If anyone has concrete evidence to the contrary, please
>> raise it now.
>
> i say this as a strong proponent of the GNU GPL, and while i personally would
> not mind switch licenses, i do not believe that this is something anyone else
> would want.
>
> so the reason you can't use GNU-smalltalk code is because pharo and squeak
> should remain under the MIT license.
>
> if you are creating an add-on package then the license is a non-issue, but if
> you want the package to become part of the core, then it must be licensed under
> the MIT license.
>
> in other words, sure it is legal to combine MIT and LGPL code, what is not
> legal is relicensing LGPL code as MIT unless you are the author. and that is
> what the warning is about. by reading the LGPL code of gnu-smalltalk you risk
> accidentally copying it.
>
> adding LGPL code to the core thus would effectively change the license, and as
> i said, i don't think anyone wants that.
>
> randal schwartz suggests a cleanroom approach, though i personally think that
> is overkill. if a cleanroom approach were really necessary than i would never
> be allowed to switch jobs because once i have been working on one companys
> private code i would be tainted for life, as i could accidentally reproduce the
> same code in my next job.
>
> however, either you get the GNU-smalltalk authors to relicense their unicode
> classes under the MIT license, or they will need to be rewritten from scratch.

I read in that thread that contributions to the GNU Smalltalk must
have copyright assigned to FSF.  So the FSF could be asked to
relicense those classes as MIT.  You would have to see the text of the
assignment clause to know whether the original authors (if you can
track them in the code history) can directly relicense it MIT.

Now if a MIT licensed unicode library arises that is used by many
Smalltalks, GNU Smalltalk might feel inclined to incorporate it
downstream under their own license.  One reason to argue that MIT is
more free than GPL/LGPL, though the latter has the alternate advantage
of enforced reciprocity.

cheers -ben

> i would suggest asking them in the name of having a common code-base for all
> smalltalks.
>
> greetings, martin.