On Feb 26, 2008, at 12:43 , Damien Pollet wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: José L. Redrejo Rodríguez <jredrejo at edu.juntaextremadura.net>
> Date: Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 8:46 AM
> Subject: Re: Web page with status of squeak license issue resolution?
> To: Petter Reinholdtsen <pere at hungry.com>
> Cc: Damien Pollet <damien.pollet at gmail.com>, debian- 
> edu at lists.debian.org
>
>
>
>  El mar, 26-02-2008 a las 08:29 +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen escribió:
>
>
>> Hi.  We spoke together after your lightning talk on FOSDEM about
>> getting squeak into Debian.  You mentioned that there is slow  
>> progress
>> in getting the license question resolved, but that it is a lot of
>> work.  Is there a web page documenting the status of this work?  Like
>> who need to be contacted, who is already contacted and who is left to
>> contact?
>>
>> As I mentioned earlier, we in the Debian Edu community are interested
>> in including squeak into our distribution, and for this reason  
>> want to
>> see it in Debian/main.  CC to our list to keep the other maintainers
>> updated on the squeak status.
>>
>> I've found <URL:http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/159> and
>> <URL:http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/3733> but did not see any
>> information there about the work on contacting previous authors to  
>> get
>> them to agree on a relicensing.
>>
>
>
>  Those page are obsolete.
>  The relicensing process is described and updated at
>  http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/6016
>
>  As the part of code that has not been relicensed is because  
> contacting
>  the authors has not been possible, current plans are rewritting that
>  part of code.
>
>  About taking Squeak in Debian, I have an ITP over the squeak virtual
>  machine (#454635) and I plan to upload it as soon as I have time to
>  finish a couple of pending patches for 64 bits platforms.
>  There are different ways to use Squeak, people from squeak.org are  
> more
>  focused in using squeak as a development tool, and people from
>  squeakland.org are more focused in using it for kids and teaching and
>  currently working on the OLPC project. My intention is to do the
>  squeak-vm interface oriented to teachers and students and give to the
>  interface as better integration with the desktop as possible.
>
>  For future Squeak images, as soon as the license issue is  
> finished, we
>  can work on different images. At Extremadura we have been working on
>  customizing the image with a more updated interface, more eyecandy  
> and
>  adding projects from all around the world (Germany, Japan, Spain &  
> USA)
>  with a lot of educative tools. The project and the image is  
> available at
>  http://squeak.educarex.es. We have also made some interactive  
> books for
>  maths with the image. Those images are used in our school and will be
>  uploaded to Debian when possible.
>
>  So, in brief, today smalltalk developers are needed to recode the  
> small
>  part of code that has not been relicensed yet. There are some voices
>  that say that FSF allows releasing under a free license if the
>  percentage of code without the license is lower than 5%. If that were
>  true it could be done today, but nobody is sure about it.
>
>  Regards.
>  José L.

A Fedora developer recently pointed out the mix of licenses in the VM  
source code:

> Also note, significant portions of this package appear to be dual  
> licensed under
> the LGPLv2.1+ and the Squeak license, neither of which are MIT.
>
> ./platforms/Cross/plugins/JPEGReadWriter2Plugin/jcomapi.c
> notes it is licensed and to read a README file, but no such file  
> exists
> (contrary to the Independent JPEG Group's license).  It might be  
> considered free
> enough, but that's not entirely clear.
>
> There's a boatload of MP3 plugin code here.  MP3 is patented.
>
> ./platforms/Cross/plugins/SoundCodecPrims/ is missing a COPYRIGHT file
> containing the license for code in that dir too.
>
> There's a lot of stuff under a Sun copyright with a permissive  
> license.
>
> There's stuff under the Squeak license, not dual-licensed.
>
> There's Perl-Compatible-Regular-Expressions which is yet another  
> license...
>
> There's GPLv2+ code in ./platforms/unix/plugins/VideoForLinuxPlugin/ 
> ccvt_types.h


(from https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=247983)

We intend to clean this up, which may well end up removing code. If  
this hurts anyone, they'll surely implement a replacement ;)

- Bert -