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Re: squeak

Am 17.03.2004 um 11:38 schrieb Andreas Tille:


On Wed, 17 Mar 2004, Bert Freudenberg wrote:


Allowing third parties to "make money" with Squeak-based applications
is part of the intent of the Squeak License. Any modifications to the
base system have to be shared and thus given back to the community.
Whatever you build on top of Squeak (using the base system as a
development and runtime environment) can be proprietary or shared.

This is what BSD, MPL or similiar licenses was invented for ...
Not quite. BSD does not enforce giving back to the community. If you work at a company using BSD-licensed code, you can not go to your employer and say look, I *have* to publish these modifications I did to the base system, because otherwise we are violating the license and can not use this wonderful system. They can just force you to work all day on proprietary code that nobody will ever see. You know, there are companies who do not like to give away their code.
Anyway, this point is moot because I don't see the Squeak License being modified any time soon. There is no reason to. You can use and modify Squeak in commercial or non-profit settings, in proprietary or open-source environments. People are doing just that, now.
Squeak is free, but not Free as the FSF defines it, both for social and 
technical reasons. The technical reasons include that Squeak is a
dynamic, "life" object system, in contrast to most other programming
environments who are based on "dead" source code. Terms like "source
code", "linking", "library" etc. do not have quite the same meaning.
This makes it hard to be compare it with the GPL.

We do not necessarily need a GPL license.


Fine.


And Open Source? Of
course you have the source built into the life system! It is actually
very hard to lock down the system in a way that you can not easily
access the source code.

Well the term "Open Source" is used often for things where you are
allowed to have a look at the source, but our (Debian) definition
includes the right to change and redistribute.
You are allowed and encouraged to modify and redistribute. Otherwise the Squeak community would not even exist. Read the Squeak license stuff, for example at http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/159 


Just consider the Debian Guidelines

     http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

if they would work.
I don't see any conflicts. But that's maybe just me, being a hacker instead of a lawyer (and proud of it). 


What Debian gives back to Squeak is a *really*
great user base which might be helpful for your project.  This is the
extra plus and there are *many* projects who really like it to become
pupolar on the back of Debian.
Well, as I said, it would be great if Debian would include Squeak. It's not like Squeak's future depends on it (because one of its main advantages is that it runs on *any* platform), but it still would be a very welcome way to make it known and accessible to more people.
Or, to illustrate the "life system" idea a bit: Who does really run his 
whole desktop under GDB? Not many, I'd guess. You'd rather do a
pathological examination of the core dump instead. However, in Squeak I do exactly this. Whenever something goes wrong, I can immediately debug 
and fix it, of course in the running system. No restart of the crashed
application necessary. You would be surprised what difference this
makes in your development style!
Well, I do not see any reason why this conflicts with a license which fits 
the rules mentioned above.
Me neither. That was more to wake your interest in Squeak. I like actually doing things much better then talking license mumbo. 


(*) If Disney's legal department can accept this open-source license,
it should be farely safe to assume it will work for your company, too.
Sorry, Debian is not a company and we are simply not allowed to distribute 
software which conflicts with the guidelines above.
Well, you specifically asked about commercial use, so I commented on that. 

- Bert -
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