On Wed, Oct 24, 2001 at 08:58:54AM -0400, Andrew C. Greenberg wrote:
> 
> On Wednesday, October 24, 2001, at 05:18  AM, goran.hultgren at bluefish.se 
> wrote:
> 
> > Andrew Greenberg also wrote:
> >> There was, for a few versions (somewhere between 2.4 and 2.7), a
> >> message that clearly stated that contributions and changes were,
> >> unless expressly stated otherwise, made under Squeak-L.  I don't
> >> think it is in the present version, but it ought to be placed
> >> back, as a matter of good legal hygiene.
> >
> > Yes I second this. And perhaps we could complement the upcoming
> > repository/modules system with some license mechanisms - easy way of
> > stamping a license on a module and also easily have a list available
> > describing what licenses play together etc.
> 
> I'm not for the latter proposal.  The LAST thing we need to do is 
> facilitate alternative licenses for microscopic pieces of Squeak.  In my 
> view, Squeak-L needs to be fixed, yes.  And thus, Squeak must be 
> backported to Squeak-L2, yes.  In the meanwhile, apart from some 
> discomfort in some quarters and precluding publication as Debian, 
> Squeak-L is internally consistent legally, and has no meaningful 
> problems.  A proliferation of various, potentially incompatible, and 
> mixed-in-image licenses could ultimately kill Squeak or render it wholly 
> unusable for most practical purposes.

I have a thought.  Why don't we write an open-source license for
Squeak goodies?

I'm envisioning something similar to the LGPL, only written to suit an
image-based product and without some of the more annoying bits.  In
addition, it would include a clause saying something like, "You may
file this code into Squeak and release the result under Squeak's
license" and possibly a similar clause allowing the software to be
merged with other non-trivial open-source projects.

This provides all the Squeak hackers out there with a preferred
licence to slap on their projects, one which will be not be subject to
license-clash headaches.

It might also solve the Squeak-L issues in the long run.  If every
change is released under the goodie license, we will eventually reach
the point where it vastly outweighs the part of the system that's
under the Squeak-L, at which point we could simply discard and
re-implement it under a friendlier license.




> Anyway, I suggest that compiling the list of helpers and putting it up 
> on the Swiki would be a really good thing.  

It should probably go into the released images as well, maybe tacked
onto the end of the "Welcome" text.  After all, we're just in this for
the fame.  ;-)



                              --Chris