> From: [...] Alan Kay
> I hate to be the kid in the crowd who noticed the Emporer was naked,
> but do the people on this list -- or for that matter, does anyone on
> the planet -- actually know what the law is here?

I suspect not - and that suspicion is based both on lack of test cases, as
you state, and on lack of information on how development by multiple
individuals subject to multiple legal frameworks will be handled.  I would
be amazed if any real progress was made on IP licensing within the next ten
years, and surprised if it was made this century.

[ Many of Alan's comments elided in the interests of a one-sided discussion
;-) ]

> While all of you are wasting (er, spending) a lot of time on this, it
> might be good to realize that the definitive definitions, suits,
> court cases, and actual laws are all really yet to happen. Given the
> high level of greed and low levels of perspective and intelligence of
> many of the players here, we should hope that all this is delayed as
> long as possible. The chance of actual logic, insight and forward
> thinking having much force here is nil.

Indeed.  The problem is that the current IP situation (generally, not just
Squeak) is causing FUD* on a very large scale.  Consider the original driver
for this: Debian will not even include Squeak in the non-free part of their
distribution, despite the license being - in many ways - considerably less
practically restrictive than GPL.  Whilst we cannot eliminate the FUD
entirely, as wording is always open to interpretation, we can attempt to
reduce it, as Alan continues:

> As I said once before: at this point, we need better lines of code
> more than better lines of license! However, I think there are a few
> things in SqueakL -- the Apple license (the only one that obtains in
> my opinion) -- that could be removed to make it smaller and simpler,
> and this might be possible to do.

A simpler license needs to communicate fewer notions and therefore has fewer
opportunities for misinterpretation.  Alan, if you can somehow get Apple to
simplify the current Squeak license, you will be doing many of us a great
service.  How can we (individually or collectively) help, if at all?

A single license for all parts of Squeak, *almost no matter what that single
license contains*, also leads to the overall licensing situation
communicating fewer notions than multiple licenses based around that single
license.  There are therefore fewer opportunities for misinterpretation -
which I [mis?]interpret as Goran's point about Ian's Squeak-L-derived / GPL
dual license for the UNIX VM.  Fortunately, it is easier to ask Ian for an
exception than Apple - and don't say he didn't warn you (see the warning on
http://www-sor.inria.fr/~piumarta/cv/index.html for details).

		- Peter

*Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt