Squeak Licence and Debian and Apple and Skolelinux

Ross Boylan RossBoylan at stanfordalumni.org
Wed Mar 24 19:21:29 UTC 2004


A couple other points have occurred to me.  I am not a lawyer.

First, the good news: In
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/debian-legal-200110/msg00028.html
Apple says it can't relicense because the fonts are from a third
party.  But the indemnification clause, along with much of the
license, refers specifically to Apple.  So Apple should be free to
change it.  This would leave the font problem, but not the liability
problem.

It might be worth thinking if there's a way that people could license
their stuff so as to automatically strip those clauses away if Apple
is agreeable.

Second, the bad news: I originally thought the indemnification clause
only put you on the hook for your modifications; the email cited above
sort of reads that way.  However, read literally, the clause makes
anyone accepting it liable for *any* modification.  Hence my musings
in my previous message about how much of squeak is considered
"modified." 

It might also be worth stating explicitly that the indemnification
clause involves more than money; I spoke in terms of money since it
was the most salient issue and the most convenient short-hand.  For
example, cooperating in defense could involve spending time, making
records available, etc.

I haven't studied the newer Apple Open source license in any detail,
so don't have much of an opinion on it.  I do know that, at least
initially, it included some items that disturbed some open source
types (unless I'm getting this confused with Netscape's licensing...).

I can't resist sharing another outlandish lawsuit scenario: The
WestWorld scenario.  Disney opens an animatronic theme park powered by
squeak and the robots go crazy and kill all the guests.  Disney sues
everyone ever involved in squeak.



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