Licenses redux

Mark Mullin mark at vibrant3d.com
Sun Feb 10 14:58:35 UTC 2002


I've posted a couple of times on the foundation group re licenses, and I run
a company that will be releasing a product that is based on a combination of
our proprietary tech and Squeak.  We've been through the Squeak licensing in
detail, and are comfortable with our position, which is to give away
everything that is in Smalltalk, to provide Squeak to anyone without
question, and to aggressively enforce all licensing and copyright
protections on our plugin architecture.  This treats Squeak the way it
should be treated and still allows us to function as a commercial
enterprise.

Rant on-
These days, anyone has to look at these issues.  Forget everything else,
those of you reading this in academic halls are probably all too aware that
research budgets are more and more getting a once over based on "what should
we research that may produce patents/etc that we can put in our endowment",
so given the supposedly free-est of environments is anything but, at least
in the U.S.....................................

There is NOTHING to be gained by beating this issue to death in a public
forum, with the venting of much opinions.  If some day this ever does end up
in a he said/she said situation in front of judge and jury, a lawyer can
take all this traffic about licensing, and use it to make a lot more case
than they should.

I would argue that unless one of our resident gray beards with prior
experience and contacts (Alan I think this fits you and few others :-) wants
to officially start driving a process of evaluating and potentially changing
the license, it would be better for us all to leave the discussions of the
license issue alone.   The Squeak license is pretty clear reading, yes it
has problems, and no, I'm not opposed to seeing some changes.  But we're not
changing anything here, we're just filling the creek up with mud.  And the
lower the visibility, the more likely a smart legal mind can prove pretty
much whatever they want.

I post this cause there have been various comments about "what will
commercial concerns do with Squeak given the license we have".  I can answer
that.  Some of us will use it, what we get for what we give makes it a fine
arrangement all the way around.  So we're not worring about the license.  On
the other hand, we watch the license discussions carefully, and those do
worry us.  First, there may be others considering Squeak as a commercial
vehicle and we loose them because of all the noise on the licensing issue.
Second,  interpretation is a bad thing when it comes to legal agreements
like licenses.  Remember that the selection of words in any contract has
nothing to do with welding an irrefutable logical chain, it's the selection
of words to argue over in court later, if need be.  So lets not make the
argument any broader than it needs to be.

Rant off.

Don't get me wrong, I think Squeak has a living and vibrant community and I
think it's membership should talk about whatever they bloody well please.  I
only ask that we not generate huge paper trails that might provide fodder
for efforts we won't like.  I know, use, and associate with lawyers, and
some I'll even drink with.  But when they're working, I barely trust my own.

Thanks
MMM/Vibrant3D




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