On Wednesday, March 26, 2003, at 06:10 PM, Daniel Vainsencher wrote:

> "Andrew C. Greenberg" <werdna at mucow.com> wrote:
>> I have brought this up before.  This is something we should not do
>> unilaterally [...]
> Why not?

It is poor transactional practice.  In law, it is not better to act 
first and seek forgiveness later.  It tends to make people schitzy 
about contributing or using code when the heritage of the license is 
subject to dispute.  If the goal is to seek comfort and legal certainty 
for those proceeding to use Squeak, the proposed approach is foolish in 
the extreme.  If you don't care about the license, then you shouldn't 
care whether it is GPL, Squeak-L, or any other license.

> Since what I wish for Squeak is acceptance in the community of free
> software and open source, I think the important issue is DFSG and 
> Debian
> acceptance, not OSI acceptance. Though companies might look to the OSI
> for the decision, most of the community looks to Debian
> (http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/licenses.html).

Fair enough, but that isn't an ideology shared by a broad majority of 
the Squeak community, most of whom are simply tired of lawyers and 
ideologues taking up previous space in what should be a colleagial 
technical forum.  Indeed, many of us, including Alan, finds the use of 
the word "free" for a more constraining or restrictive license such as 
GPL an abuse of language.  At any rate, the likelihood of consensus of 
adopting a GPL license is virtually nil.  The fact that a single veto 
would require clean rooming all relevant contributions of the vetoer 
makes the likelihood of success even less.

> I think failing to achieve a Debian acceptable license would be a pity.
> These people have a clear direction, and it's one I at least agree 
> with.

It would be better, however, than creating a licensing mire that 
precludes virtually any use of Squeak, as adopting conflicting or 
illict licenses might well accomplish.

>> Consistent with good engineering practices, let us reach a communal
>> consensus as to what we want FIRST, and then use that to help us
>> develop requirements for proceeding.
> I agree, that's a good idea. I know what I want. I know Andreas, for
> example, disagrees. Though I don't know why, since he never addressed
> the matters of wider audience, and more visibility to other friendly
> communities. Maybe these don't matter to him. Andreas? Someone else of
> the same opinion?

Most of us just don't buy that Squeak's audience is materially limited 
by the present license.  While there are no doubt the occasional 
ideologues who refuse out of hand, even guys like Daniel have 
participated with some interest.  The only FSF contribution to 
Smalltalk is a morass, and while any hand is welcome, I don't see that 
we need to agitate to bring those folks along.

Frankly, the Squeak community comprises some of the greatest luminaries 
in OOP, and I find it a pleasure.  I think it is not the license, but 
many other factors that "limit" broader use today -- but I'm not sure 
that you would even find a majority of the community that thinks Squeak 
NEEDS "more visibility" or a "wider audience."  While all that would be 
welcome, I would NOT agree to compromises of the legal stability of the 
system to achieve it.