[squeak-dev] Is Cincom slowly killing Visual Smalltalk Enterprice

Ralph Johnson johnson at cs.uiuc.edu
Thu Sep 2 13:05:40 UTC 2010


2010/9/2 Henrik Høyer <hh at sppl.dk>

> I don't understand this.  What kind of legal problems are people afraid of?
>  It can't be illegal to fix bugs, can it?
>
>
>
> Two problems:
>
> The layers of Cincom believe that fixing bugs is only possible if you are
> performing reverse engineering (this may be illegal in some part of the
> world)
>
> The layers of Cincom believe that Cincom is the **only one** who has the
> rights to support the product.
>

Smalltalk V was different from VisualWorks and Squeak in that large parts of
the system, including the compiler, did not have source code.  VisualAge was
like that, too.  Thus, they could probably claim that they intended to keep
those secret and you are not allowed to look at them.  On the other hand,
the main class libraries come with source that everybody browses and
changes, so I cant believe that they can forbid you from changing them.

On the other hand, they can't be making much money from VSE.  Given the
threat of bad feelings from the Smalltalk community, they will probably
negotiate.  It makes sense for you to organize and try to negotiate as a
group.

-Ralph
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