That's pretty good all the way around!

Cheers,

Alan

------

At 9:58 AM -0500 2/10/02, Mark Mullin wrote:
>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


--