Hi Daniel --

I forget what licence Apple is currently using for their opensource 
stuff, but I've been told it is like BSD. Could you have your lawyer 
look at it? It might be easiest to get Apple to relicense Squeak 
using a model they currently use, if it works OK for us. If this 
looks good, I'm happy to ask Steve to let us do it.

Cheers,

Alan

At 9:14 PM +0300 8/15/03, Daniel Vainsencher wrote:
>As I mentioned in a message to the list about 30 hours ago, I spoke to a
>lawyer and his advice was to refrain from creatively sublicensing squeak
>so as to make our problems go away. His reasoning is that the "no less
>protective" makes such attempts dangerous, because if the license we
>pick (say, BSD) turns out to be less protective, then we'd retroactively
>find ourselves to have been abusing Apples copyright.
>
>Now, this lawyer is not a copyright/opensource expert, and it is
>possible we'll find someone more confident about getting smart. But I
>think we need to start planning on solving this problem by organizing
>*and by coding*, rather than by PR, lawyers or licensing. I say this
>quite sadly, because this will not be easy to do :-( OTOH, it could be
>fun. Anyone care to design a new VM? :-)
>
>We would be far ahead of the game if every Smalltalker that ever wanted
>to share his code as widely as possible were to clearly license his code
>under MIT, rather the hodge podge of "public domain", no explicit
>license, "Look ma, I can write licenses, too!" and so forth we have now.
>We're in the miserable position of having a culture that promotes and
>values sharing, so that we have amazingly cool software we can use, but
>doesn't have a clear free licensing culture to go with it, so very
>little of it is really free.
>
>I've heard that the public domain incantation is considered by some
>lawyers to be unenforcable in the US, BTW.
>
>Daniel
>
>Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus <schwa at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
>>  On Fri, Aug 15, 2003 at 02:26:25PM +0300, Daniel Vainsencher wrote:
>>  > IANAL, but - when the copyright owner gives you the right to sublicense
>>  > something, that means that you can publish it with an alternate license,
>>  > replacing the existing license. He may impose limitations on this new
>>  > license, as SqueakL does (the "no less protective" language).
>>
>>  Thanks Daniel, that's pretty much what I thought.  My confusion is
>>  because, given that the above is a corret definition of sublicensing,
>>  it seems like it should not be difficult to replace the Squeak license
>>  with (say) the MIT license (except for, perhaps, the export clause).
>>  Of course IANAL either.
>>
>>  "You may distribute and sublicense such Modified Software only under
>>  the terms of a valid, binding license that makes no representations or
>>  warranties on behalf of Apple, and is no less protective of Apple and
>>  Apple's rights than this License."
>>
>>  As a half-measure to get Squeak into Debian (since, as I understand
>>  it, their main concern is their own liability), references to Apple
>>  could be replaced by "the Distributor", with Distributor being defined
>>  as "Apple Computer, or any party who has received and later
>>  distributes the Software or Modified Software according to the terms
>>  of the license".
>>
>>  This would not remove the problem with the export clause, so Squeak
>>  could not go in Debian-free, but should provide enough protection
>>  to the Debians that they would be able to put it in Debian-nonfree.
>>
>>  I have no idea at all whether the pros of this approach outweigh the
>>  cons.  Indeed, I have no idea what the cons are ;-)
>>
>>  Joshua
>>
>>
>>  >
>>  > Daniel
>>  >
>>  > Joshua 'Schwa' Gargus <schwa at cc.gatech.edu> wrote:
>>  > > In general, I feel I have a decent understanding of licensing 
>>issues, but
>>  > > one thing I do not grok at all is sublicensing.  Perhaps a 
>>simple example
>>  > > could help me understand. 
>>  > >
>>  > > If Squeak were sublicensed under a different license, would the Apple
>  > > > license still appear, in addition to the sublicensed license?  Or
>>  > > would the Apple license be replaced?  What would a future user of Squeak
>>  > > (after the sublicensing takes place) see when they start poking around
>>  > > for the license?
>>  > >
>>  > > Thanks,
>>  > > Joshua


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