Squeak License OSD-compliance

Wed Feb 27 15:33:49 UTC 2002

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!
Perhaps my license_quick_ref.html [1] would be helpful to illustrate how the two 
features are orthogonal. ("GPL-compatible" is the column with the legend 
"combine with GPL'ed code and redistribute". "GPL-like" is logical NOT of the 
column entitled "combine with proprietary and redistribute".)
I am a big fan of open source dynamic object oriented languages like Python and 
E [2] and I've heard many great things about Squeak. Let me add my voice to 
lichengtai's that I hope Squeak will be GPL-compatible.
Regards,
Zooko
[1] http://zooko.com/license_quick_ref.html
[2] http://erights.org/
---
 zooko.com
Security and Distributed Systems Engineering
---
 you wrote:
>> lichengtai at yahoo.com said:
> > Hope you can make the Squeak license GNU GPL compatible. That will
> > make Squeak useful to a lot of people. 
>> I'll have to disappoint you there, but we are not planning to move towards the 
> GPL. The GPL has problems for an environment like Squeak, which has all the 
> power of a complete operating system but is typically distributed (to end 
> users) as two files: the VM and the object memory image. Under the GPL, no 
> matter what you'd do, distributing in this form would constitute linking and 
> that would mean that commercial code would never be possible with Squeak; 
> something that we expressly do want to make possible (not in the latest place, 
> because it is happening and these companies are making great contributions to 
> the Commons, as it should be).
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