Freeing Squeak (license-wise)

John W. Sarkela sarkela at sbcglobal.net
Thu Mar 13 14:38:19 UTC 2003


On Thursday, March 13, 2003, at 05:56 AM, Alan Kay wrote:
> I don't think that you have a good model here of how things work. I 
> think Andrew would agree if I called the US a "litigous society" 
> (people like to sue each other and do), so almost anything is 
> actionable regardless of any logic or prior art or agreements. This is 
> why "less is more" in general. The question is very often not who is 
> right but who has the larger resources. Who can tie the the other 
> party up and get injunctions, etc.?
>
> I'm just advising you to be very careful about all of this.
>
> Alan
>

I'm not a lawyer, nor do I play one on tv.
But Alan's point is really sound.

This is not an exercise in code refactoring. Disney's lawyers are
among the most vicious of litigators in the multinational corporate
world. Did I mention they have extraordinarily deep pockets?

Also note that even though Disney hosted Squeak Central for
a period, the license constraints are with Apple and Microsoft,
*not* Apple and Disney. Did I mention that Microsoft has deep
pockets and a history of sequestering all competitive technologies?
I've heard that they have pretty good lawyers too.

A sweetheart of a license was granted to Squeak at a time when
there were few who could see commercial potential in it.
It would be prudent to work within the framework of the
existing license agreement. The only constraint is with
respect to the Apple and Microsoft fonts.

This was very much at the core of the Squeak World Tour
strategy. Keep the license unchanged, add an attachment
that clearly indicates that the constraining IP, ie the fonts,
had been completely eliminated from the image.

Whatever the outcome, we all share the consequences.

John Sarkela

> -----
>
> At 2:39 PM +0100 3/13/03, Cees de Groot wrote:
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>> Hi Alan,
>>
>> On Thu, 2003-03-13 at 14:07, Alan Kay wrote:
>>>  Consider the potential opening the can of worms, waking the sleeping
>>>  dog, raising the lid of Pandora's box (or paste your favorite
>>>  metaphor here) .....
>>>
>> You've made that argument before, and the refutation is always the 
>> same
>> - basically, there are no dogs to awake: whatever happens, we'll have
>> the stuff at least under the Squeak-L. The worst thing that can happen
>> is that Apple and/or Disney slam the door on re-licensing. At least we
>> will know where we are then, can forget about getting back to these
>> discussions for the coming fivehundred years (I'm just extrapolating 
>> US
>> Congress' copyright extensions here ;-)), and continue with our daily
>> business.
>>
>> Unless you know something we're unaware of, so far...
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Cees
>>
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>
> -- 
>



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