Freeing Squeak (license-wise)

Daniel Vainsencher danielv at netvision.net.il
Thu Mar 13 11:51:39 UTC 2003


Hi Cees. Since this might seem argumentative, I'll start by saying I 
appreciate your initiative on this front, and I'm trying to do the same 
thing. I do think it's important we coordinate, so that our naturally 
different perspectives help and don't hinder our efforts.

The problem of Freeing Squeak is a coalition building game. We need a
big percentage of many players (with some having much more weight than
others) for it to work. The seriousness with which each player treats
this game certainly can be dependent on how many others have already
opted in.

Therefore, to me, it's worth doing. You personally are not asked to
commit another ten minutes to it, except to use it (when we have results) 
to the best effect you can when you're talking to third parties.

What those third parties perceive is definitely important, and what the
formal education of any specific person there doesn't matter - we should
use every leverage we can that will affect anyone there that has an
effect on decisions. Apple is a big company, and Squeak is not it's main
concern. It probably won't be decided by the board, and for all we know
might well be decided in the negative by the first middle range lawyer
that reads it (in most big organization, almost anyone can say no to a
nonstandard request). 

We don't need to suppy them with excuses such as "The requestor is one
guy that doesn't even control the other relevant IP. Most of the other
holders also released it under Squeak-L, why should we change anything?"

In the long term, we're not doing this to say we tried (nobody in the
open source world or court cares what license you Wanted To Have), we're
doing it to get the best agreement possible.

I'm curious. Could you send me/the list softcopy of your request to Apple?

Daniel

Cees de Groot <cg at cdegroot.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 11:28, Hannes Hirzel wrote:
> > I could imagine that lawyers from Apple or Disney
> > probably preceive this differently.
> >=20
> I think it is relatively simple to get the rest of the community going,
> yes. And I don't know what the lawyers from Apple and/or Disney
> perceive, nor do I care. What lawyers perceive (sorry, Andrew) is
> secondary and always subject to negotiation. The really important
> showstopper thing is whether Apple and Disney are willing to negotiate
> *at all*. Not the lawyers, but the decision makers.
> 
> Until we have that showstopper cleared, spending time on any other task
> related to the project is a potential complete wasted effort. As a
> project manager, I usually try to clear such issues before burning money
> (or, worse, volunteer time) on stuff dependent on showstoppers.=20
> 
> I'll contact the guy at Apple around the end of March. Someone should
> contact Disney and start feeling around there as well. By the time we
> have these two parties at the negotiating table (and I'm not holding my
> breath at all - in fact, I think it's a futile exercise but at least we
> need to be able to say "we tried"), we can spawn out and perform
> parallel activities that might help oil negotiations.
> 
> Some compared my pushing for the removal of Apple fonts to running
> around and collecting signatures. This is not a perfect analogy for
> several reasons:
> - Removing the Apple fonts and replacing them with 'mainstream' fonts
> has additional benefits;
> - I perceived that to be a crucial issue for Apple, protective as they
> are of their 'IP' (quoted because I find the word an ugly contradiction
> in terms).=20
> - The amount of work involved is much lower (I could do it in two hours
> - hunting down all contributors, drawing up contracts, deciding on a new
> license they would release to, deciding on a legal entity to release to,
> etcetera is several orders of magnitude more work).
> 
> Anyway, just my two eurocents...
> 
> 
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