Squeak License OSD-compliance

[Göran Hultgren]

Hi guys!

--- Zooko <zooko at zooko.com> wrote:
> Cees:
> 
> You appear to have misunderstood what <lichengtai at yahoo.com> said.  He expressed 
> hope that Squeak could be GPL-compatible, not that it would be GPL-like!

No, I think Cees understood (this question has been hammered to death on the Squeak list) but he
might have expressed himself a bit unclear.

The problem we are facing is that even if the community would like to go for a BSD/MIT like
license (which would be GPL compatible) we do not have the final word here. Apple is in charge
(being the owner of a large, but hard to define, part of the core). We are (as far as I know)
approaching Apple with the proposal that:

1. They transfer the license to Squeak Foundation. But that is probably not going to happen. If it
happens we would probably make a new license (BSD/MIT whatever) which would work with GPL. Note
though further below on that.

2. If they don't agree with the above, they change the license to APSL which (I assume) is not GPL
compatible. Or at least recraft SqueakL to be "like" APSL in the questionable clauses.

And finally - there are still special problems with an image-based language/environment like
Squeak/Smalltalk when it comes to GPL - linking is too vaguely defined. We have a very good IP
lawyer that has spoken with Mr Stallman about that problem but according to him (Andrew Greenberg)
Mr Stallman wasn't interested in the problem.

regards, Göran

PS. This is according to what I know - there might be errors in the above. DS

=====
Göran Hultgren, goran.hultgren at bluefish.se
GSM: +46 70 3933950, http://www.bluefish.se
"Department of Redundancy department." -- ThinkGeek

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