Dear Squeakers,
I have a few questions about the Squeak license and was wondering if people on the list could help me out in getting them answered. Definitive answers from authoritative source are especially welcome, however general kibitzing would be of interest to me as well, especially in terms of pointing out questions I haven't thought to ask.
I don't have any inside knowledge of the status of Squeak licences, but I am trained in IT law :-)
I feel that looking more closely at the licencing issues involved in Squeak may be a very good thing to do, for a few reasons:
(1) Open source software in general is coming under greater scrutiny now that commercial enterprises are looking at incorporating it into their products.
(2) Copyright law is getting more serious. Criminal offences are increasing, as is the term (US just increased its term to life + 70 years. Think about that - if someone writes a class in their early 20s and lives til they are 85, the source code for that class will be covered by the copyright act for 130 years).
Like it or loath it, copyright is here to stay, and projects like Squeak which span the gap between fully commercial software such as Windows and fully GNU- protected software need to put in place mechanisms to avoid conflict, and provide security.
However, the modular nature of Squeak should make it very easy create these mechanisms.
As an example, what about adding copyright information to classes? Each class could have a date, name and a licence number. Every distribution of the Squeak core classes could have a document which provides a list of licencing options, from GPL to fully commercial. Tools could be provided to browse licences etc.
This would enable a commercial distributor to take a Squeak image made up of seperate packages, and browse all of the classes covered by the Gnu license, file them out if necessary. Alternatively, a creator could easily identify the parts of his image which were under commercial copyright and write GNU replacements.
Put the licence document on the Swiki, and allow people to add their own licences.
This is just an off-the-cuff suggestion which may cause technical/legal/social criticisms (what fun!)... but it's worth considering to save the Squeak community a lot of problems later on.
Russell
It has been said "Don't worry. Apple has already forgot about it..." in terms of the license and its enforcement. However that probably won't cut it with IP lawyers of a major corporation. These are sorts of questions such a lawyer might ask, and it would be nice to have ready answers available for anyone contemplating getting Squeak into their organization.
-Paul Fernhout Kurtz-Fernhout Software <a href="http://www.kurtz-
fernhout.com">http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com</a>
========================================================= Developers of custom software and educational simulations Creators of the open source Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator Creators of the StoryHarp(TM) Audioventure Authoring System
------------------------------------------------------------ Russell Allen russell.allen@firebirdmedia.com
Random Quote: "They must often change who would be constant in happiness or wisdom." Confucius, Analects.
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On Thu, Nov 26, 1998 at 12:54:55AM +0000, russell.allen@firebirdmedia.com wrote:
Dear Squeakers,
I have a few questions about the Squeak license and was wondering if people on the list could help me out in getting them answered. Definitive answers from authoritative source are especially welcome, however general kibitzing would be of interest to me as well, especially in terms of pointing out questions I haven't thought to ask.
[cut]
As an example, what about adding copyright information to classes? Each class could have a date, name and a licence number. Every distribution of the Squeak core classes could have a document which provides a list of licencing options, from GPL to fully commercial. Tools could be provided to browse licences etc.
This smacks of trying to solve a social problem with software. I think a better idea might just be to do what many of the perl folks do--distribute their modules under the same license as perl itself. It makes this really easy because everyone knows what the terms of the license are.
My suggestion is that that the powers that be consider either rewriting the squeak license to make it simpler and easier for others to adopt or to switch to one of the better-known licenses (BSD, Artistic, GPL with extensions[1]). This would then be the preferred license for addons.
All I would need to do when uploading a goodie is to add the comment, "released under the XXX license" and everyone who uses it will know what I mean and won't come under any additional restrictions.
This is just an off-the-cuff suggestion which may cause technical/legal/social criticisms (what fun!)... but it's worth considering to save the Squeak community a lot of problems later on.
Ditto.
It has been said "Don't worry. Apple has already forgot about it..." in terms of the license and its enforcement. However that probably won't cut it with IP lawyers of a major corporation. These are sorts of questions such a lawyer might ask, and it would be nice to have ready answers available for anyone contemplating getting Squeak into their organization.
And, if the day comes that some GiantEvilCorporation [tm] sees Squeak as a threat to its proprietary products, a flaw in the license could prove disastrous.
-Paul Fernhout
Russell Allen
--Chris
[1] The GPL as-is is a bit too restrictive for my tastes. It doesn't allow non-GPL'd applications to be written with a GPL'd interpreter or library (i.e. vm and image).
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