Cees,
Well hey . . . the Squeak license not being quite
"Free Software" by Stallman's strict standards does not disqualify it from being
"Open Source", and so free enough.
Section 6 states, "Export Law
Assurances. You may not use or otherwise export or reexport the Apple Software
except as authorized by United States law and the laws of the jurisdiction in
which the Apple Software was obtained. In particular, but without limitation,
the Apple Software may not be exported or reexported (i) into (or to a national
or resident of) any U.S. embargoed country or (ii) to anyone on the U.S.
Treasury Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals or the U.S.
Department of Commerce's Table of Denial Orders. By using the Apple Software,
you represent and warrant that you are not located in, under control of, or a
national or resident of any such country or on any such list."
While I do
not agree with such restrictions as a matter of political conviction, I
recognize that this section was only included to reflect actual US law, which
would restrict exportation of Squeak to embargoed countries regardless of it
being in the license or not. Windows or LINUX would have the same restrictions
on them, but this matters little because information wants to be free and the
internet has no borders . . . I guess.
I do not see anything problematic
in section 2.
As far as licenses go, Squeak's is very elegant, and
understandable. I also don't think it's terms would be revised by Apple,
even if there were objections.
Regarding fonts, I am thinking that it
would make Squeak more desirable if it could use existing font libraries for the
Mac and PC. For instance, would it be possible for Squeak to read TrueType or
OpenType fonts? There are many free ones out there. Font design is a very
specialized field, but it would not be hard to find someone who would be willing
to design a special one, just for Squeak . . . but then again . . . as
you put it, "Or are there deeper [technical] reasons that New York
still rulez the image?"
I would be happy to help form a team of designers
who could act as a resource to the programmers, if there is a demand for such
services. Please let me know.
- Matthew
----- Original Message
-----
From: "Cees de Groot" <cg@home.cdegroot.com>
Newsgroups:
lists.squeakfoundation
To:
<squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Monday, February
11, 2002 12:32 PM
Subject: Re: [Squeakfoundation]Visibility in the open
source community
> Matthew Denis Richard Sloly
<sloly@artcenter.edu> said:
> >This may be a bit out of date, but
based on the discussions on the Squeak
> >Foundation List re the Squeak
license, and also for my own research, I
> >decided to seek opinions on
this matter from the horses mouth(s) and
emailed
> >Richard Stallman
on the matter.
> >
> Thanks for this. His remarks coincide with
what I think are the weak
spots,
> which has strengthened my belief in
my ability to read licenses somewhat
;-).
>
> I have submitted
the SqueakL for review to the Open Source Institute
>
(www.opensource.org), and I propose that people who are really
interested
in
> discussing the open source-ness of the SqueakL proceed
to their license
> discussion list, where the SqueakL was posted for
discussion this morning.
> It'll prevent duplication, and some Squeakers
showing up on their list
will
> backup the seriousness of our request
for review and thus will attract
more
> comments and more time from all
the people on that list who will quite
likely
> have an awful lot of
experience in this area. A mail to
>
license-discuss-subscribe@opensource.org is all that's needed to get
on.
>
> About the fonts: I wonder why they haven't been replaced yet
by more, err,
> generally accepted counterparts like Helvetica or Times.
As I've
understood
> it, it is clear that bitmap fonts aren't
protectable (at least, Andrew G.
> seems to state this on the Wiki in
terms that a lawyer only uses when he's
> 1000% sure he's right, IOW
usually never ;-)), so am I right to assume
that
> the encoding is the
only issue? Not only from a legal PoV, but also from
ease
> of
acceptance I think it would be good to let Squeak come up by
default
with
> better-known fonts (in a way, I think that'll greatly
help usability of
the
> interface). Or are there deeper reasons that
New York still rulez the
image?
>
>
>
> --
>
Cees de
Groot
http://www.cdegroot.com <cg@cdegroot.com>
>
GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD 1986 F303 937F E098
9E8B
> _______________________________________________
>
Squeakfoundation mailing list
>
Squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org
>
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/listinfo/squeakfoundation
>
>