[Squeakfoundation]urrrghh - ask for lawyer

[Maarten Maartensz]

Hello Mark Mullin,

At 10:42 31-1-02 -0500, you wrote:

>The comment about sleeping lions is well taken, but I've worked with apple
>legal before, when they had their own building and were really mean (and
>overfed, happily  :-)
>
>I'd wait till all the heavies on this board weigh in for a concensus, but we
>do have a lawyer with some time he owes us and a lot of experience with our
>software and protecting it.  I think he could probably do the job for us as
>a community, I'd volunteer him for the trenches if there is community
>interest, with the goal being absolute clarification (given legalese) of
>what's a hands off integration relationship with squeak, i.e. solid
>protection for plugin apps that do not have any squeak side modifications
>that aren't open sourced.  In my own case, protect my plugin and let me keep
>my copyright on my unique grammar for communicating with my plugin, I'll
>even cough up _all_ my squeak side code, base platform or pure application.
>
>If you're amenable or opposed to this idea, send me a note.  I'll tabulate
>results for a few days and then repost them, and everybody can pitch in and
>bitch   :-)
>
>
>This is presupposing I'm not murdered on .dev for casting aspersions at
>iterator loop speeds.......
>
>
>Regards
>
>Mark

Well - I could have done more programming if I had not been forced to spend
quite a lot of time in Dutch court-cases (not related to software
development at all). So I have some real life experience with courts and
lawyers (and prefer to do my own cases, and to stay out of courts). What
concerns me are the following general points:

1. To protect Squeak from any commercial take-over if it is getting
succesful. (E.g.: What if MS takes over Apple?)
2. To protect Squeak and SqueakFoundation from any legal threats (for this
is how lawyers  appear to work: Start a court-case and break down the
opponent simply by being forced to defend oneself: most persons have too
much to loose not to be willing to "compromise" and "settle").
3. To keep Squeak definitely open source - which seems to me (but I am
naive and ignorant here) by having all code contributors both own their
code and giving it away as open source (as in science: your contributions,
if any, will be part of science, but your publications are yours, and you
get the public credit, as in "So-and-so's Theorem").
4. Allow commercial application of Squeak without any consequences for
Squeak's open source status and development (as e.g. geology is applied by
oil-businesses).

Most of this seems covered by the Squeak license, in intent at least, but
one of my problems is that I've read diverse licenses and discussions on
their relative merits I can't make much of, being no lawyer and no US citizen.

Also, being a philosophical type I'm interested in how Squeak and open
source fit in any property-law at all, but this probably is up to courts
and legal philosophers rather than practical lawyers. (To me it appears
Squeak is developed mostly like a free conversation between free
individuals, and just as in conversations there are responsibilities and
originators but no ownership issues, since there is no transferable
commodity. This is similar again to science, and what complicates matters
is that Squeak.exe etc. is applied science and technology.)

In any case, I for my part would with interest read the legal opinion of a
specialist, especially if it is written in English, not legalese - and if I
don't have to pay for it. But maybe my concerns are too academic ....

Regards,

Maarten.



 





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Maarten Maartensz. Homepage:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~maartens/ 
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