On 6/26/06, Hilaire Fernandes hilaire@ext.cri74.org wrote:
I am frowarding this answer from Chao-Kuei Hung as I am not sure it will get in the Squeak-dev mailing list.
He brings up valid points, supporting my assertion that this is a PR issue. Note that I am just analyzing here, not judging. PR issues can be showstoppers just as much as technical issues.
However, it means that any activity around this is very much *not* a direct scratch-your-own-itch thing. And it is therefore not surprising that it is hard to raise support.
Therefore, what needs to be done is to couple this to a scratch-your-own-itch thing. This is the main reason I'm advocating Craig's Spoon work - it holds the promise of solving a lot of the current issues around the monolithic character of Squeak, and it would be trivial to check the minimal code base against Squeak 1.1 and fix license-technical deficiencies.
Personally, I'm not going to lift a finger to help re-licensing projects that take 3.9 as a starting point. It's not that I wouldn't like to see it done, but I just don't have the copious spare time and I have my doubts of the feasibility of doing this as a volunteer effort.
As Craig said, we (SqF Board) are going to discuss various approaches with Dan Ravicher July 5th. We'll have a more informed idea of what is possible after that conversation, I hope. However, at the moment I think there are two realistic approaches: - Take Squeak 1.1 and declare that the new main line of development; - Do a license check on the Spoon code and declare that the new main line of development. In both cases, we'd start with a "deficient" Squeak and work upwards. The third option, sort out the mess that's 3.9 (licensing-wise), seems to be not very viable. It's a lot of work to start with, and the outcomes are unsure.
There's also a fourth option - VRI doing a lot of work to bring Squeak 1.1 to a license-clean level that can support Open Croquet... Anyone from VRI listening here? I'm curious as to what their plans are now that they "own" Squeak 1.1...