Matthew -

Has anyone considered licensing those one-liners from VPRI in good 
faith? I.e., instead of saying "this is code of unknown heritage" say 
"this is code contributed by VPRI in EToys 4 under MIT license". Period. 
I don't know if this works for the lawyers but it might be worth a try.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

Matthew Fulmer wrote:
> 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/
>