Sublicensing

Colin Putney cputney at wiresong.ca
Sat Aug 16 21:22:37 UTC 2003


On Saturday, August 16, 2003, at 01:00  PM, Tim Rowledge wrote:

> "Pixel" <pixel at quantumchamaeleon.com> wrote:
>
>> Regarding clean-room rewrites ... Just how many on this list would be
>> qualified to perform the actual rewrite, since the definition of 
>> clean-room
>> pretty much implies that the work is being done by someone that has 
>> not
>> looked at the original code?
> Exactly. It's not worth spending a single brain cycle on. Ain't gonna
> happen.
>
> There's only two possibilities
> a) persue amendment of the license
> b) live with it
> 	i) by coping with the current squeakL
> 	ii) by just not doing squeak

The problem with a) is that you can't do it all in one lump. Let's 
suppose for a moment that Alan convinced Steve to relicense Apple's 
contribution using the MIT license. That only covers the code for which 
Apple holds the copyright. Now we have to approach Disney, and *every* 
other person or organization that has contributed code to Squeak under 
the SqueakL.

Don't get me wrong, it's doable, and I propose to do just that, only 
backwards. Start with all future contributions, and then begin working 
backwards through the contributors. Many will agree to relicense; some 
will be difficult to contact, and some won't agree.

In cases where we can't secure agreement, we'll have to make note that 
this or that bit of code is still under SqueakL, and take it into 
account next time we do work in that area. If we're careful, as Daniel 
suggested, to replace rather than refactor the encumbered bits, we'll 
eventually end up with a free Squeak.

This issue is not going to be easily solved, no matter how we approach 
it. The good news is that it's not urgent. As many have pointed out, 
the SqueakL doesn't hold us back on a practical level. If we make 
license migration part of our long-term agenda, it can happen as a 
natural byproduct of the work we'd be doing anyway.

Colin



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