Dear Andrew et al,

In the midst of the sound and fury, here is a concrete question:

I have a piece of (so far) unlicenced squeak code which I  would like to
release under an open source licence.  It has been suggested that it be
released under the GPL, because it is the most common/well-known open
source license.

You have argued below that releasing squeak code under the GPL would
cause problems; that the "GPL has restrictions for monolithic images
that make it unworkable for Smalltalk systems."

Could you or someone else give a list of these problems that I could use
as a basis for suggesting a better license to the powers that be?

(Note: they are probably much more interested in what impact a licence
will have on potential users and uses than they are in notions of
'freedom')

:)
Russell

"Andrew C. Greenberg" <werdna at mucow.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, November 11, 2001, at 12:46  PM, Ed Heil wrote:
> 
> > Andrew Greenberg writes:
> >>
> >> More analogy wars.  This one just as offensive than
> >> prior comparisons of
> >> Squeakers with slavers and mengele.
> >
> > Andrew, I didn't compare Squeakers to slavers.
> 
> and
> 
> On Thursday, November 1, 2001, at 12:31  PM, Ed Heil wrote:
> 
> > The only thing the GPL prevents you from doing is *LIMITING OTHER
> > PEOPLE'S ABILITY TO USE AND MODIFY THE SOFTWARE*.
> >
> > It's equivalent to a philosophical argument over which country is more
> > free -- a country which has laws against slavery, or a country which
> > has no laws against slavery?  The latter is more limiting, but the
> > former, many would say, is "freer."
> 
> We can quibble all we like about what, specifically, Ed was or was not 
> saying.  This is one of the reasons these analogy wars accomplish 
> nothing.
> 
> GPL isn't just "a little bit" restrictive for Smalltalk -- it has impact 
> for monolithic object images ranging far beyond the definitions of 
> "freedom" proposed here.  A Unix user is free to load, run and 
> distribute a proprietary package on a "free" GPL'd system, but would not 
> be likewise "free" in Squeak.
> 
> GPL has restrictions for monolithic images that make it unworkable for 
> Smalltalk systems.  Hence, for us, the definitions of "free" predicated 
> upon "a little restriction for good is good," simply ignores, or perhaps 
> intentionally obfuscates, these issues.
> 
> GPL for Smalltalk has effects so bold and brazen, even FSF does not 
> defend those "little restrictions" as viable for Unix.  Indeed, if FSF 
> believes so much in the revisionist definitions of "free" proposed here, 
> why do they keep LGPL for the C library at all, and not simply require 
> that gcc be used only to create GPL'd software?