Chronos

stéphane ducasse ducasse at iam.unibe.ch
Thu Jul 21 10:36:32 UTC 2005


On 21 juil. 05, at 5:35, Alan Lovejoy wrote:

> stéphane:
>
> 1. Hernan Wilkinson: No fair pointing me at Hernan's work when a  
> Google
> search turns up nothing--especially since there's no way I can  
> travel from
> California to Europe any time soon.  So tell me more.

Ask hernan the pdf of his paper. It will be available soon for public.

>
> 2. The Chronos License: In case no one's noticed, the current  
> version of the
> license also forbids any commercial use.  Of course, I'll be  
> removing that
> restriction once I've completed the documentation, implemented leap  
> seconds,
> and completed a final beta period.  ETA of Release 1.0 is no later  
> than the
> end of the year (hey, I have a full time job that doesn't involve  
> Smalltalk
> coding.)
>
> When Release 1.0 is published, I will be revising the license.  The  
> revision
> will certainly remove the restriction against commercial use, but  
> there's no
> reason I couldn't make other changes also at that time, should I  
> become
> convinced that I should do so.  What I'm trying to say is that  
> there's time
> for those of you who strongly object to the "no porting outside of
> Smalltalk" clause to convince me to change my mind.
>
> However, at this point I've heard from exactly four people who  
> possibly
> object. One of them recently wrote me for permission to port to a  
> particular
> non-Smalltalk programming language--which I have granted in writing  
> (the
> letter's in the mail as of today.) Whether that addresses his  
> objection or
> not he hasn't said.  I'm counting Howard Stearns as one of the four,
> although all he said was  "You may have trademark issues in  
> addition to the
> license controversy," which doesn't actually make his opinion on  
> the matter
> explicit.  So perhaps there are only two people who object: Andreas  
> Raab and
> Stéphane Ducasse.


Alan we are regularly got burnt by license problems, I could sent you  
the 40 emails
I exchanged to be able ot present Squeak in an open-source conference.

Now do what you want but do not complain that people do not use your  
package.


> Nevertheless, I feel the objections raise significant issues that  
> deserve
> further discussion--and I don't mean just in the context of  
> Chronos. The
> issues are much larger than that.  I don't want any such discussion  
> to focus
> on Chronos per se--partly because it deserves to be a generic  
> discussion,
> and partly because I'm really trying to avoid overly publicizing  
> Chronos at
> this time (it's not done yet.) At this time, I'd prefer that  
> Chronos only be
> seriously used by those for whom date/time computations are of high
> interest--and even then, only for purposes of evaluation. That's  
> why my
> initial post said it was a "low key announcement."
>
> So, given the subject of this thread, I'm going to close without  
> saying
> anything further right now, but will post a new topic where the  
> general
> licensing issues can be discussed (although not today--I have other  
> business
> that must be attended to.)  Of course, others are welcome to start  
> such a
> topic on their own, should they be so inclined.
>
> --Alan
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org
> [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of  
> stéphane
> ducasse
> Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 2:10 AM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: Re: Chronos
>
> But alan
>
> why do not you provide it as MIT and you can still port it to Java
> and sell it? I know that this is naive but
> when I see the hell of the licenses around and got systematically
> bitten by it.
> I think that in squeak we should have MIT and Squeak-L: look at
> Squeaksource, smallwiki, seaside, croquet, tweak.....
> the new network rewrite, compiler....will all be like that. Else I
> think that people should not really use your package.
>
> By the way you will be interested by the forthcoming talk at esug
> about another time package developed by hernan wilkinson.
> It seems that their package will be open too, so may be it would be
> good to see how to produce the best of your packages.
> Or at least have a look.
>
> Stef
>
> On 20 juil. 05, at 4:05, Alan Lovejoy wrote:
>
>
>>
>>
>> Brian Rice [water at tunes.org] napical:
>>
>>
>>> Eek! That means I can't port it to Slate (http://slate.tunes.org/).
>>> What's the point of that?
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> On Jul 19, 2005, at 5:06 PM, Andreas Raab wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Looks interesting, but I sure hope you'll get your licensing terms
>>> in order. In particular this:
>>>
>>>     "4. You must agree not to port or translate Chronos into any
>>> programming language whose syntax, semantics and computational
>>> model are not substantially compliant to the ANSI Smalltalk
>>> Language Specification.  Porting Chronos to non-Smalltalk
>>> programming languages is strictly prohibited.  However, you are
>>> welcome to enter into negotiations with the copyright owner for
>>> permission to port Chronos to non-Smalltalk programming languages.
>>> In some cases, permission may be granted at no cost or other
>>> encumberance."
>>>
>>> Unless you are trying to find out whether anyone actually reads the
>>> license (in which case you've earned yourself a pat on the back for
>>> adding a really creative little clause to your license ;-) I think
>>> you should seriously rethink the attitude express by this clause.
>>> Surely you realize that niche languages like Smalltalk would be
>>> hurt more than other systems if everybody would pick up this
>>> attitude and have do-not-port-to-languages-i-don't-like clauses.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>   - Andreas
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Calm down guys.
>>
>> Firstly, permit me to call your attention to the following two
>> sentences of
>> the license:
>>
>> "However, you are welcome to enter into negotiations with the
>> copyright
>> owner for  permission to port Chronos to non-Smalltalk programming
>> languages.  In some cases, permission may be granted at no cost or
>> other
>> encumberance."
>>
>> Of course, the license says nothing that specifies the basis on
>> which I
>> would decide whether or not to grant permission to port.  So let me
>> state it
>> here:  Although Andreas is partially correct that one of my
>> motivations is
>> to deny the functionality of Chronos to be ported to certain other
>> languages
>> because of my partisan dislike of the languages preferred by the
>> Curly-Braced Horde, that's not the primary motivation.  The primary
>> motivation is money.  I want to preserve my right to port Chronos  
>> to a
>> widely-used language (e.g., Java) and sell it for money.  That
>> motivation is
>> not operative in the case of languages such as Slate, Self or
>> Haskell, and
>> so I would grant permission for a port to such languages without
>> hesitation.
>>
>> However, because I want to be able to say that no one has
>> permission to port
>> who was not given such permission in writing, you must obtain written
>> permission.  If Brian is serious about porting Chronos to Slate, he
>> should
>> send me his contact details, and I will send him porting  
>> permission in
>> writing.
>>
>> --Alan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>




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