I agree that a general (preferably not country specific) professional 
legal analysis of the license would be useful.

I think the points of interest would be:
- Risks in it for users, developers and redistributors
- Analysis of its interaction with other code: fixes to existing classes 
vs. separate packages, and MIT vs. Squeak-L.
- Analysis of the strategy I proposed a while ago for living with and 
eventually replacing SqueakL. The strategy is: dual license all new code 
as MIT/SqueakL, try to replace subsystems rather than fix them. If its 
bad, propose an alternative strategy.

Then the company in question should decide whether this is sufficient 
for it, to pay a local lawyer for the details specific to its situation.

If we do this, it is important to get it from someone that is already 
familiar with open source licenses, so the people Ron contacted would be 
a good starting point (if it is beyond what they want to do pro-bono, 
they can probably recommend someone).

Daniel

Cees De Groot wrote:
> On 12/20/05, Stéphane Ducasse <stephane.ducasse at univ-savoie.fr> wrote:
> 
>>Now I would like to know if this is possible that we ask andrew and
>>the lawyer that ron contact for the cryptographic
>>packages to write down their analysis and that we publish it on the
>>squeak web site.
>>
> 
> I think that is a good idea. Not that any surprises will pop up - the
> issues with the Squeak License have been hashed out many times,
> including a couple of times in discussions with Andrew Greenberg, who
> *is* a lawyer ;)
> 
> However - these are US lawyers. You don't mention what country this
> company lives in, but their analysis may or may not apply to local
> laws. So, if they are really serious, due dilligence would demand:
> - a translation of the license into the local language by a licensed
> legal translator;
> - an evaluation of the result by a local IP lawyer.
> But that one should do for any license.
> 
> BTW - if you think it's a good idea, you can pass them my contact
> details for any immediate questions. I think between the SqF board
> members, I've been doing the most legal work including more hours on
> the Squeak license than I care to count ;-).
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Cees
>