[Squeakfoundation]Visibility in the open source community

[Cees de Groot]

Matthew Denis Richard Sloly <sloly@artcenter.edu> said:
>Well hey . . . the Squeak license not being quite "Free Software" by Stallman's strict standards does not disqualify it from being "Open Source", and so free enough.
>
Well, that's what I'm trying to find out - is it "open source", or is Squeak
"Open Source Definition Certifiable" (i.e. is SqueakL an OS license according
to the OSI OSD), ...

>Section 6 states, "Export Law Assurances.[...]
>
I just checked the GPL, and even the GPL has a proviso for export law
compliance. So I think we can check that off as a major hindrance.

>I do not see anything problematic in section 2.
>
The font bit is too restrictive for the taste of the OS community. However,
that's easily solvable.

>As far as licenses go, Squeak's is very elegant, and understandable. I also don't think it's terms would be revised by Apple, even if there were objections.
>
I agree that it's simple, elegant, and reasonably understandable (module some
interpretations about what counts as modifications that must be given back
versus enhancements you can keep to yourself). Foremost, I think the gist of
the license (protect the Commons while enabling proprietary extensions) are
good for Squeak. 

OTOH, given the trouble that Apple seems to have gone through to make their
license OSD compliant, I do think that there would be interest at Apple to
clean this bit up. I think the APSL has mostly the same provisions as the
SqueakL (including the bit about having to share modifications), and having
Squeak relicensed under the APSL would in one stroke move all the licensing
discussions to other lists :-)

>Regarding fonts, I am thinking that it would make Squeak more desirable if it could use existing font libraries for the Mac and PC.
>
Both. Squeak must come with a platform-independent set of fonts, in order to
protect the write-once, run exactly the same everywhere feature. So something
must be in the image. At the same time, it'd be nice if Squeak could interface
with native font routines but the same goes for a lot of people about
interfacing to native widget libaries and thus this is not entirely relevant
for the license discussion. 

-- 
Cees de Groot               http://www.cdegroot.com     <cg@cdegroot.com>
GnuPG 1024D/E0989E8B 0016 F679 F38D 5946 4ECD  1986 F303 937F E098 9E8B