Hi all!

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?st=E9phane_ducasse?= <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> wrote:
> This guy is right.
> I support totally his effort. I just do not know anybody at Apple.
> I suggest everybody to email this person to show him your support.

Ehmmm, well. I sent an email to Tom explaining that the situation is
actually a bit more complex. The relevant part of that email is this:
-------------
In short - the main issue to understand here is that Apple don't have
copyright of more than a part of current Squeak. When I checked a while
back IIRC that would be approximately 20%! Disney has in fact a much
larger part.

The reason for this is that SqC moved from Apple to Disney and their
"work for hire" automatically is copyrighted by their employer - and
even though the license used does make the situation slightly more
unclear (what does it really mean when Disney slaps Squeak-L on their
code, when Squeak-L explicitly refers to Apple?) - the fact that the
code produced at Disney is copyrighted by Disney is pretty much clear,
IIRC Andrew Greenberg (a software license specialist who happens to be a
Squeaker) has verified this fact.
--------------

So... yes, this issue is popping up over and over and over. :) And sure,
for good reasons too. But please, before we embark on yet another
license-thread-discussing-this-to-death, let us remember the basics
here:

1. An author of code has automatic copyright of it. The license the
author offers other people does not change this. If I write code and
publish it under GPL or the MIT license - it *still* is copyrighted by
me and I can *still* change or revoke the license as I see fit.

2. A company with an author working "for hire" normally aquires the
copyright of that work, unless there are other contracts in effect. At
least this is my understanding. AFAIK there were no special contracts
for SqC at Apple nor Disney.

3. If we really do wish to change the license of Squeak this probably
boils down to getting Apple, Disney and a rather large group of
individual Squeakers to agree on a new license or get them to agree to
transfer the copyright to say the new Squeakfoundation which then can
craft a new license.

Ok, so of course IANAL etc and my memory may be rusty, but AFAIK the
above is still true.

regards, Göran