Hi people!
"Davide Arrigo" davide.arrigo@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Hilaire
.....
As a free software activist and developer, I always get political difficulty to promote Squeak because of its licence. For me it is already free but most of the free software community and my friend do not share this point of view. It is really a problem because most people get stuck to the licence problem and they can't discover all the great stuff coming with Squeak and Smalltalk.
... I'm totally agree with you, I didn't understood why the Squeak License is too different from the other from opensource and free software movement. In my opinion is better to rethinking this licensing politics to promote Squeak and grow in the opensource community. Squeak is an amazing tool as educational environment, it's a great occasion.
Now, if you would be more familiar with all twists and turns in the history of Squeak and know what parts of Squeak have been made by whom etc, then you would probably be aware of the following:
1. Most Squeakers would really like to have Squeak under a BSD/MIT-ish license. So it is not that we don't *want* to. Licensing is being discussed yearly in very long threads and things are exlained over and over again. Check archives.
2. Squeak 3.9 consists of code from: a) Apple (available today under Squeak-L or APSL2 which is nice). I am guessing about 20% of the code. b) Disney (under Squeak-L). I am guessing at least 40%-60% of the code. c) Probably (just a guess) several hundreds of individuals (available under Squeak-L and in some cases also MIT) d) A few other organisations I am guessing (available under Squeak-L and possibly also MIT).
3. In order to change the license of Squeak 3.9 to APSL2 we would need to: a) Get all parties b-d above to agree to do that. I am guessing c) and d) would be doable (even though c) is a major undertaking to get done properly) - but the really tricky one is b).
4. In order to change the license of Squeak 3.9 to MIT we would need to: a) Get all parties a-d above to agree to do that. Since we just went through this discussion with Apple and I think MIT was on the table as an option, I do not think it would either be wise nor successful to try to get it under MIT now that we just managed to get it under APSL2.
5. There are also other licensees of the original Smalltalk-80 code that might be an interesting option (Craig, Dan or Alan knows more).
IMHO changing the license of Squeak 3.9 *in full* (and doing it only in part is not interesting) is *very hard* if not impossible. Again the big hurdle is b) above. I know Alan has presented a different view on b), but AFAIK it is still clear that Disney owns that code and in order to change the license of it we need Disney to do it.
Sooo.... IMHO it boils down to a big RESTART of Squeak and doing that *just* for licensing is quite silly. BUT... there are other technical reasons for our community to take on such a task anyway so perhaps it is acually doable. Now, let's dream a little :) :
Step 1. Say Ian makes the Magic only he can do and presents his remarkable "Id" with "Pepsi" etc after the summer and squeak-dev goes bonkers of joy. This latest work from Ian is all MIT licensed AFAIK and could make a compelling new base for us to build something ENTIRELY NEW and very exciting on. I have toyed with hist Idst-5.1 from his website and it is very cool stuff. I have also exchanged some emails with Ian and I look forward to some kind of posting from him about this but that is Ian's ball of course.
Step 2. The other VM guys agree that the regular "old" Squeak VM scheme has reached its limit and perhaps 3.9 will not be the base of Grand 4.0 but instead goes into "maintenance mode" and is followed by 3.10, 3.11 with only smaller modifications and enhancements. And stays Squeak-L as today. The VM group decides to adopt Ian's work (Id etc) as the base for a new Squeak and a Team is formed to try to get the low level pieces in place. This is hard technical work and will take a while.
Step 3. A small clean kernel "image" is produced which is MIT licensed. Perhaps we can use Spoon as a base, or perhaps we can use Smalltalk-80 from one of the other original licensees and get it under MIT (Craig?) or perhaps we just write something from scratch (unsure of the code Ian has in Idst for example). It is then brought into graphical life with Tweak as the UI framework and Toolbuilder to make backporting tools from Squeak 3.9 easier.
Step 4. More tools are brought over from old Squeak into the New Squeak. It gets inhabitable. At this point the "general Squeaker" can also join. Up until this step we need dedicated people - because it will not be a pleasant place to live in. Only MIT code should of course be let into the "base" image.
Step 5. Eventually porting begins of the top level pieces from the Squeak world. Seaside, KomHttpServer/Swazoo etc.
And tada, life is nice. A dream? Something doable? I dunno. What I do know is that it would take a few years to pull off all those steps and that it would take *lots* of stamina from Step 1 to Step 4. Before this New Squeak is inhabitable we can only rely on a handful of really talented Squeakers and VM guys to get us to Step 4 - and they are typically busy with lots of other projects.
But generally I think the time is right for us to "burn the disk packs!". We have several technical pieces lined up (Spoon, Id/Pepsi, Exupery), we have several high profile projects (Croquet, Sophie etc) in need, we have a community that is strong and an elected board that should be capable of pulling of reasonable organisation of it all. And we have burned ourselves enough times on the "let's get this cleaned up...". It just too hard work.
regards, Göran
PS. All the above is *my* perception of things and there may be several factual omittings or errors. :)