Squeak licensing questions

russell.allen at firebirdmedia.com russell.allen at firebirdmedia.com
Thu Nov 26 00:54:55 UTC 1998


>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 at firebirdmedia.com

Random Quote: "They must often change who would be constant
in happiness or wisdom."  Confucius, Analects.

------------------------------------------------------------





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