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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