Sublicensing

Bert Freudenberg bert at isg.cs.uni-magdeburg.de
Fri Aug 15 22:28:53 UTC 2003


AINAL either, but FSF itself does not "like" APSL 2.0, which may be a 
Good Thing ;-)

The following is excerpted from http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html:

"In version 2.0 of the APSL, the definition of "Externally Deployed" has 
been narrowed in a way that is appropriate for the respect of users' 
freedoms.  It has always been the position of FSF that the freedom of 
Free Software is primarily for the users of that software. 
Technologies, like web applications, are changing the way that users 
interact with software. The APSL 2.0, like the Affero GPL , seeks to 
defend the freedom of those who use software in these novel ways, 
without unduly hindering the users' privacy nor freedom to use the 
software.

The FSF now considers the APSL to be a free software license with three 
  major practical problems, reminiscent of the NPL:

	It is not a true copyleft, because it allows linking with other files 
which may be entirely proprietary.
	It is unfair, since it requires you to give Apple rights to your 
changes which Apple will not give you for its code.
	It is incompatible with the GPL.

For this reason, we recommend you do not release new software using 
this license, even though it is ok to use and improve software which 
other people release under this license."


-- Bert

Andreas Raab wrote:

> IANAL, but I am slightly sceptical about what it means that APSL 2.0 is now
> a "Free Software License". Given FSFs particular interpretations of "free"
> it may turn out that for quite a number of users that "free" APSL 2.0 may
> turn out to be significantly less free of restrictions than current
> Squeak-L.
> 
> Cheers,
>   - Andreas
> 
> 
> 
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
>>[mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
>>Behalf Of Marcus Denker
>>Sent: Friday, August 15, 2003 11:57 PM
>>To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
>>Subject: Re: Sublicensing
>>
>>
>>On Fri, Aug 15, 2003 at 02:45:36PM -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
>>
>>>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.
>>>
>>
>>Apple just released a new version of the Apple Public Source
>>License (APSL 2.0). Seems to be that they worked closely with
>>the both the FSF and the OSI to make sure that everything
>>is perfect:
>>
> 
> http://www.opensource.apple.com/news/2.0-announce.html
> 
>  Apple is pleased to announce the 2.0 version of the Apple Public Source
>  License.  It improves upon the OSI-approved APSL 1.2 by conforming to the
>  definition of Free Software Licenses, as certified by the Free Software
>  Foundation. We are grateful to Richard Stallman for his many helpful
>  comments in this process.   APSL 2.0 is also being submitted to the Open
>  Source Initiative to certify its continued compliance with the Open Source
>  Definition. 
> 
> Should be perfect for Squeak. 
> 
>    Marcus
> 
> 




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