Squeak History

Allen Wirfs-Brock Allen_Wirfs-Brock at Instantiations.com
Mon Mar 17 21:39:41 UTC 2003


At 12:56 PM 3/17/2003 -0800, Craig Latta wrote:

> > I once heard that a license was originally sold for a nominal fee of
> > one dollar. Was this the version 1 license? Or was that in another
> > context?
>
>         That was what the newly-created ParcPlace paid to Xerox for the V2
>rights in 1986, with Xerox retaining a non-exclusive license.
>
>-C

Right, the V1 license did not involve any fee or royalty.

Here is a cautionary tale that relates to ambiguous software licensing.  In 
the early 90's, Instantiations (version 1) approached Tektronix about 
licensing some of the Tek Smalltalk technology. This was technology that 
was no longer used or of interest to Tek. The business decision makers were 
favorably inclined to license the technology to us.  However, when the 
lawyers got involved, they realized that  the only people who could attest 
to which IP belonged to Tektronix and which belonged to (or was derivative 
of) Xerox were all now employees of Instantiations. This made the deal too 
risky for them and it died.

Allen Wirfs-Brock



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