[Squeakfoundation]New mailing list request for Bellesqueak

[Paul Fernhout]

Cees-

I would like to request a new mailing list and Wiki for a
Squeak-inspired project called "Bellesqueak".  This is a ground up
project inspired by Squeak, intended to learn from Squeak's strengths
and weaknesses including licensing issues. It is not an effort to modify
Squeak itself (although Squeak may be used as scaffolding and a tool to
develop Bellesqueak). 

For reference, see this earlier related thread: "Operating procedures
for a "burn the diskpacks" list?"
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeakfoundation/2001-June/000236.html
By the way, the earlier mailing list charter proposed there was reviewed
by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen (the FSF's lawyer) and the feeling
was (like Cees said in that earlier thread) the best thing was to get
people to sign papers initially or eventually, so I have added that
provision in the charter below. 

The Bellesqueak mailing list charter is to be as follows:

===

The intent of the Bellesqueak list is to support a community process
which creates, discusses, uses, and maintains a cross-platform computing
environment and knowledge management system inspired by Squeak Smalltalk
called Bellesqueak. The focus of Bellesqueak will be on transparency,
robustness, and complexity management -- to support the doing of good
deeds such as education, sustainable development, and ensuring humanity
survives Vernor Vinge's Singularity in some form. 

The entire system will be built from the ground up in a public way, with
all code for the core submitted through this Bellesqueak mailing list
and subject to the Bellesqueak license. The license of all discussions
and code contributions and other content made to this list will be under
the modified BSD license without the advertising clause (so don't
contribute postings or code here if you don't want your effort to be
under this license or if they legally can't be put under this license). 

URL links posted to the list pointing to work under other licenses shall
not be construed to mean those other works are under the Bellesqueak
license, and it is acceptable on the list to discuss other works
compatible with or derived from Bellesqueak, even if the other works
themselves are not under the same license (remembering that all
contributions to the list itself including such discussions are under
the Bellesqueak license). 

At some point, significant contributors to this list may be asked to a
sign a document along the lines stating their contributions are original
(or otherwise made with permission) and are allowed by any employers and
are submitted under this license, and at some point all future mailing
list participants may be asked to sign such a document in order to
contribute or continue contributing to the mailing list. 

To be clear, no code may be taken directly from Squeak and submitted to
the Bellesqueak list without permission from the original authors to put
it under the Bellesqueak license. Note that clearly defined modules
developed by others under licenses easily compatible with the
Bellesqueak license (like the MIT X license or in the public domain) may
from time to time be accepted into the Bellesqueak project at the
discretion of the community. Likewise, for scaffolding, Bellesqueak may
at times rely on a variety of tools or libraries which may or may not be
under the Bellesqueak license, and in those cases the licensing
distinctions of such components must be clearly noted.

For purposes of managing the future of Bellesqueak, I (Paul Fernhout)
hereby declare myself "benevolent Beau for as long as I wish" :-) 
  [For a definition of Beau see: http://www.ceder.net/def/beaubelle.php3
]
of the Bellesqueak community mailing list and claim ownership of the
Bellesqueak trademark (like Linus Torvalds claims ownership of Linux)
with my intent being to ensure the quality of whatever is called
"Bellesqueak".
Naturally, anyone may at any time take the contents of the Bellesqueak
system or mailing list and, respecting the license, fork it under a new
name if they have significantly divergent opinions of how it should
proceed.

The Bellesqueak code and posting reuse license text is as follows:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are
met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 
  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 
  3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote
products derived from this software without specific prior written
permission. 

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED
WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN
NO
EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL,
SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED
TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR
PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

====

FYI Bellesqueak's impetus relates to the "Belling the cat of complexity"
thread:
  http://squeak.cs.uiuc.edu/mail/squeak/msg04562.html
Please also note that for those wishing to deride this effort, feel free
to call it "Paultalk". ;-)

Also, I would appreciate it if discussion in this request thread
confines itself to whether Cees or possibly by extension the Squeak
Foundation should allow such a list to be made or supported based on the
stated aims and the charter and license, as opposed to a discussion in
and of themselves of the merit of the project, or the choice of license,
or whether it is needed, or whether it will produce anything of value,
etc.

-Paul Fernhout
Kurtz-Fernhout Software 
=========================================================
Developers of custom software and educational simulations
Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com