>[dangerous to delurk after only a few days, especially with code...]
>
>After the recent discussion on the mailing list about getting some decent
>free fonts, I decided to put together a few pieces.  I wanted a better
>choice of fonts to experiment with on PDA-size screens.  Also I find the
>Apple font clause in the Squeak license pernicious; if nothing else, it
>could keep Squeak from being distributed on Linux CD-ROMs.
>
>Without the Apple fonts, Squeak might be able to pass the Open Source
>Guidelines or the Debian Free Software Guidelines
> http://www.debian.org/social_contract ).

With all due respect, this notion of "freedom" is strongly at odds 
with the English definition of the word.  GPL is decidedly more 
restrictive on what I can do with software than the more BSD-like 
Squeak license.  FSF opts to redefine the word "free" to make these 
restrictions more palatable to the choir, but restrictions are 
restrictions, and those restrictions do not make me free.  Indeed, 
the notion of "freedom" defined in the Debian "social contract" is 
indeed at odds with itself, to wit:

      "License Must Not Contaminate Other Software

      The license must not place restrictions on other
      software that is distributed along with the licensed
      software. For example, the license must not insist
      that all other programs distributed on the same medium
      must be free software."

Yet according to RMS, a GPL library can not be linked with a Squeak 
plugin, without rendering the entire image in which it is contained 
subject to GPL restrictions.  Since the licenses are incompatible, 
the images would then be barred from distribution, and possibly from 
further use or modification by the person who merged them. 
Unsurprisingly, the same result would have obtained if all Apple 
fonts were excised from the image.

Many significant Squeak projects that might have used GPL have either 
been stunted, reworked using free BSD-like licensed libraries, or 
wholly rewritten from scratch because of the arcane limitations of 
GPL supposedly in the name of "freedom."

Therefore, some of us who have found the Squeak license exceedingly 
workable, and extraordinarily free, find the GPL claim of "freedom" 
ironic.  My personal view is that a "free" license shouldn't require 
as much lawyering and correspondence as was necessary to discover 
that GPL software cannot be used in a Squeak image without risking 
claims of Copyright infringement.  Interestingly, the issues 
presently being debated with regard to the next draft of GPL is not 
how to repair these problems, but to the contrary, whether GPL is 
"restrictive" enough to better assure the infection of software using 
or incorporating libraries.

Maybe it isn't the Apple font provision that is the more "pernicious"?

Regardless of any ideological view of open source licensing, we who 
were gifted Squeak software by Apple, Disney and its brilliant 
authors must take Squeak as it comes -- subject to the Squeak 
license.  Those who want a GPL Smalltalk (which Squeak can never be 
unless Apple or FSF consents otherwise) must look to the decidedly 
inferior and non-innovative GNU Smalltalk.

For my part, Squeak feels a lot more free.