Last Sunday, we officially started accepting patches for Squeak
4.0 [1]. Squeak 4.0 will be 3.10.2 + relicense, and so will be MIT. 

=========== The Short Version ===========

We are currently awaiting legal advice from the Software Freedom
Law Center [3]. It is recommended that you avoid contributing to the
relicensing effort pending further notice

=========== The Long Version ===========

There are several reasons we are doing the relicense in the
first place. In order from most important to least, these are
the reasons:
1. To be able to join the Software Freedom Conservancy [2] and
   the associated Software Freedom Law Center [3]
2. To avail the fears of corporations who are hesitant to use Squeak due to
   the SqueakL license
3. To permit the inclusion of squeak into Linux distributions;
   most importantly, Debian

I will note that this is the priority list ONLY for the
squeak.org release, as overseen by the Squeak Leadership Team
[4]. EToys 4.0 [5], which was overseen by Viewpoints Research
Institute [6] and the Squeakland Foundation [7], had a different
set of priorities in their relicense effort, namely:

- Allow EToys to be distributed with the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC
  [8]) XO laptop, under an accepted open-source license

It is not clear right now that the relicense that was acceptable
to VPRI, the Squeakland foundation, and One Laptop Per Child is
acceptable to the Software Freedom Law Center. The central
issue is this:

--- The Truth about the relicense ---

    We can never be 100% certain that all code in squeak is
    legitimately covered by the MIT license, even though we will
    be declaring it as such after the release of Squeak 4.0.
    Thus, all we can due is minimize the risk of lawsuit.
    However, there is an inherent cost to doing the relicense.
    Those responsible for the relicense must choose how much
    work they are willing to do before deeming the risk of
    lawsuit acceptable and declaring the code to be under the
    MIT license.

After review of the relicensing work done on EToys 4.0 by
Yoshiki Ohshima, Ken Causey and I have found that VPRI and
Squeakland have apparently taken the following stance regarding
the license of EToys 4.0:

--- The VPRI Stance ---

    Individual contributions consisting of less than 1 line of
    code were not rewritten, and were illegitimately relicensed
    under MIT. This is considered acceptable risk by VPRI, and
    cut down the cost of the relicense, perhaps significantly.

However, the Software Freedom Law Center has declared their
stance differently, in all their previous contacts with the
Squeak Leadership Team, through Craig Latta:

--- The SFLC Stance ---

    Every line of code must be audited, and rewritten or removed
    if it is not in compliance with the MIT license.

This is the minimal risk stance that is achievable. However, two
things are unclear:

--- Remaining Questions ---

    1. Is the SFLC stance overkill? Would SFLC accept a Squeak
       4.0 relicensed using the VPRI stance to be "acceptable
       risk"?
    2. If not, is appealing to the SFLC a cost the Squeak
       community, and specifically, the volunteers who do the
       relicense, are willing to bear?

Randal Schwartz is currently contacting SFLC to determine the
answer to the first question.

Until Randal gets a response, Ken Causey and I recommend that
nobody work on the relicense until we have more information from
SFLC.

[1] Squeak 4.0 request for contributions:
    http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2009-February/133862.html
[2] Software Freedom Conservancy
    http://conservancy.softwarefreedom.org/
[3] Software Freedom Law Center
    http://www.softwarefreedom.org/
[4] Squeak Leadership Team
    http://squeak.org/Foundation/
[5] EToys 4.0
    http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/etoys/2008-December/002849.html
    http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2009001_etoys4olpc.pdf
[6] Viewpoints Research Institute
    http://vpri.org/
[7] The Squeakland Foundation
    http://vpri.org/pipermail/squeakland/2009-January/004449.html
[8] One Laptop Per Child
    http://laptop.org/en/

-- 
Matthew Fulmer -- http://mtfulmer.wordpress.com/