[Squeakfoundation]A Gentle Introduction to the Squeak Community

[goran.hultgren@bluefish.se]

Ned Konz <ned@bike-nomad.com> wrote:
> On Saturday 23 November 2002 12:29 pm, Ian Piumarta wrote:
> > Who cares about OSI?  Just leave it at "Sq is an open-source
> > system.", or keep the original wording: "Not only is all source
> > code included and changeable at will, it is also completely open
> > and free."  Screw the rest. The OSI don't have any kind of
> > inalienable right to `magically bless' software.
> 
> I have to agree. We have to ask ourselves:
> 
> * to whom are we speaking?
> 
> To folks new to Squeak.
> 
> * why are we saying this?
> 
> To let them know what kind of community and expectations there are 
> around Squeak.
> 
> * what kind of detail do we need to go into here?
> 
> Not much. We should provide a link to the actual text of the license 
> and leave it at the original wording.

And/or perhaps a link to a FAQ explaining as much as possible.

> * to whom would it matter whether RMS would call Squeak Open Source?
>
> I'm not sure. Perhaps to people wanting to incorporate Squeak into 
> some OSI-blessed distribution? By the time they get to that point, 
> though, they'd have already read the Squeak License and become more 
> familiar with Squeak.

First of all - the acronym would probably be ESR not RMS. Richard
Stallman is the FSF guy and he doesn't like OSI nor OpenSource because
he thinks they are missing the point. SqueakL doesn't qualify as "free
software" either (that is an even smaller "eye of a needle") though.

Secondly - this DOES indeed matter a lot to developers in the "open
source/free software" world. Hey, just ask them and you will discover.

I often find people in the Squeak community missing that this is indeed
important to a lot of people. And IMHO the best way to handle this issue
is to make very clear why SqueakL isn't classified as "free software"
nor "OpenSource (tm)" and also make very clear why this is so and that
it is in fact reasons that doesn't affect many of us.

Well, unless you are a Cuban or a Libyan or someone else, like one of
the three Swedes that got branded as terrorists by the US (now at least
one of them has gotten off that list), that the US has decided to
embargo of course...

Sidenote: Hey, there are even 4 packages under GPL and 3 under LGPL on
SM, even though these licenses probably doesn't work in the image model!

regards, Göran