Squeak License

Aaron J Reichow reic0024 at d.umn.edu
Wed Nov 6 21:19:03 UTC 2002


On Wed, 6 Nov 2002, [iso-8859-1] German S. Arduino wrote:

> Thanks by your response Alan, but at the same time
> sorry because I=B4m note sure of well understand what
> you are saying (I'm from Argentina and my mother
> language is spanish).
>
> Con you explain me a bit more why the Squeak license
> is better than GPL license?

I know this was directed specifically at Alan, but:

Alan (and others, including myself) believes that the Squeak License is
superior to the GPL for reasons similar to the belief that the BSD license
or the LGPL is superior to the GPL: because it is a lot more "Free" than
the GPL, fewer restrictions.  That is, the GPL binds that anything that
bases, derives or extends itself on your GPL'd project must also be under
the GPL.  Even if your project was a library, and I wanted to link to it
just to use a few functions, my project would also have to be under the
GPL.  Regardless of whether or not you like this, it is a restriction, and
it can introduce problems.  If Squeak was under the GPL, anything you
would write in it would be forcibly under the GPL, partially because of
the the GPL is so fascist and partially because of the nature of the
Smalltalk language.

Surely there are other issues, which Alan or others may pipe in with.

I always preferred the open-by-default culture of Smalltalk.  Since
everything is pretty easily decompiled, there's been a long tradition of
openness in Smalltalk, predating the current open source movement.  In
Smalltalk, we don't need a movement like this, because it's been a part of
our culture for 30 years.

Regards.
Aaron




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