Re: Squeak in Debian?
Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu> wrote:
> The lawsuit may be completely bogus. The distributors are still
> obligated to defend Apple. I would say that being required to defend
> a company that may be on the other side of the world against frivolous
> lawsuits goes a little too far. A business or person can evaluate the
> local laws and decide whether they want to assume the liability
> associated with distributing free software. I think it is too much to
> ask for them to worry about laws in other jurisdictions.
BUT, we are only obligated to the extent the case deals with our own
actions. I do not see a problem with this. That seems good and proper
to stand up for our own actions. The clause does *NOT* make us liable
for all legal attacks on Apple regarding Squeak.
I do not understand your issue about locality. The business in question
is us, Debian. We already have a distribution server at Berkeley, so we
already need to evaluate and comply with the laws of northern
California.
Roland Stigge <stigge@antcom.de> wrote:
> Lex Spoon wrote:
> > 3. We would be in good company, because Squeak is already distributed
> > like crazy. [...]
>
> I read this kind of reasoning quite often lately, but I think it's void
> considering that Debian tries to be careful about licenses. SUSE and
> RedHat distribute and promote proprietary software. Those are not good
> examples.
Ack, I was afraid people would misread this. I am not saying we
should distribute it just because other people do -- in fact, I really
like that Debian has high standards. I am simply saying that
Debian is not going to be doing any more distribution that has
already happened. Thus, there is very little Debian-specific that
someone could sue Apple about.
> > 4. Apple is trying to support open source; it would be horrible PR for
> > them should they try and trick legal fees out of an open source grop.
>
> Is Apple really supporting free software? Is MacOS (or related) free? Is
> software you "abandoned" (as you described what Apple did with Squeak) a
> way to _support_ free software?
Apple really does support open source. The kernel of OS/X is open
source:
http://developer.apple.com/darwin/
Squeak was abandoned by Apple because the entire Squeak team left Apple
when Alan Kay did. (In fact, this flexiblity is part of why Kay open
sourced Squeak to begin with; he didn't do that with his first Smalltalk
development effort.)
-Lex
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