[ANN] Closure Compiler

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Wed Mar 26 00:33:16 UTC 2003


Hi John,

> My biggest problem with the Squeak License is that it is too 
> Apple centric. By publishing my stuff under the Squeak-L, I'm
> not licensing it, Apple is. I don't even know if I can publish
> something under the Squeak-L since I can't represent Apple and
> the license is between the end user and Apple, not the
> end user and myself. Furthermore, the license protects Apple, 
> but what about me...

IANAL, but to me this seems utterly simple: You release it under the terms
of Squeak-L not as Apple Computers Inc. Or, more Squeaky:

	Squeak-L copyReplaceAll: 'Apple' with: 'The Owner'.

Try it ;-)

> One other thing that bothers me about the Squeak-L is the 
> part about making the modified software publicly available.

Exhibit a) is quite clear in this respect "modifications, overwrites,
replacements, deletions, additions, or ports to new platforms of: (1) the
methods of existing classes objects or their existing relationships, or (2)
any part of the virtual machine"

> I don't mind the idea of making your modifications available
> for others to use, but since there are no definitions of terms
> like "modification", someone could argue that by performing
> a garbage collection you are modifying a method -- 
> before the method had a bit pattern of x, but now it has a bit
> pattern of y; clearly the method was modified.

Excuse me, but honestly isn't this a tad overboards? I mean if you go as far
then any OS-loader which loads a library (and _will_ modify addresses by
doing so) would create a "modified derivative works". Which effectively
means that Windows is GPLed as soon as I start Cygwin, right? It doesn't
seem to me that Redmond is overly concerned about this so why should you?!
;-)

> BTW, what is meant by publishing something under both the MIT 
> license and the Squeak license? How does that work? Does a user
> pick a license that they like, or are they somehow combined?
> If they are combined, what about conflicting items?

That's exactly the reason Andrew said that cross-licensing in this way is a
recipe for desaster. If you have conflicting items you really can't combine
the two. It's fine as long people get to "choose and pick" because there we
could (for example) choose the "Squeak-L version" for inclusion in
Base-Squeak. But mixing them I think is a no-no.

Cheers,
  - Andreas



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