DEADLINE for Squeak contributor agreements: 1 May 2007

Hi Germán--

> I've signed and sended the agreement (received by VP and checked with
> Kim) but I'm NOT on any of lists of Craig.

     I generate those lists from a larger object database (also
available from http://netjam.org/squeak/contributors ), and only authors
with at least one accepted contribution on record appear in them. Please
refer me to your accepted contribution(s) so I can update your entry in
the database. I apologize for the inconvenience.

> I've emailed before to Craig but not get responses.

     Yes, I have one message from you, from 23 February 2007. Please
accept my apologies for the delay in responding.


     thanks again,

-C

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

Hi Stef--

> I would not like than, when I die, my public work becomes unavailable
> just because I'm not here anymore to sign a paper. That's another kind
> of death.

     That would be, I agree, but...

> Shall we now all carry an "intellectual property donor" card so that
> we can drop dead anytime without fear that our fellow human beings
> feel obliged to forget what we have done?

     ...certainly if you care enough to avoid that situation, then
you'll go to the trouble of specifying a license when you release software?

     Also, not redistributing something and forgetting about it are very
different things. I'll certainly remember good software and the people
who wrote it for at least as long as I can use the software, whether or
not I have the right to redistribute it.


-C

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

Hi Alejandro--

> I've written to this list because I know someone with more time or
> understanding will help me to know why my name is listed in a public
> place where I do not have given permission to be written.

     The list of contributors from whom we have not received a signed
agreement was meant as a gentle reminder to those contributors. All of
the lists are meant as a public service for the community. We assumed
that, by contributing to a public open-source software project, every
contributor would be comfortable with their names being used in these ways.

     Please accept our apologies.

> In this days when the "Squeak community" (now with a body) do not want
> anyone to be considered as a contributor...

     I couldn't parse that; if you change your mind about spending more
of your time on this discussion, I'd appreciate a rephrasing.

> I do not understand why the persons that do not agreed must be
> discriminated.

     Again, the list of contributors who have not returned a signed
agreement was meant as a gentle reminder to those contributors who, we
assumed, had simply not gotten around to it yet.

> I think that it is more polite to list the persons that are promoted
> by the Squeak organization.

     I can see that point, however, I don't think it would be
sufficiently effective in prompting responses from those contributors
who had simply forgotten to return a signed agreement.


     thanks again,

-C

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

Craig Latta wrote:
>      Also, not redistributing something and forgetting about it are very
> different things.

well, I meant the former. since we are in the situation of dropping code
from the image just because their authors passed away.

anyway, I'm only saying I find this sad... I don't have anything to
propose for a change.


Stef

On 3/22/07, Stéphane Rollandin <[hidden email]> wrote:
> well, I meant the former. since we are in the situation of dropping code
> from the image just because their authors passed away.
>
That is just because the contributions were done under unclear or
incompatible licensing terms. If you clearly slap the MIT license on
your code, you can die to your heart's content, and people can just
take over.

Stéphane Rollandin <[hidden email]> writes:
> Craig Latta wrote:
> >      Also, not redistributing something and forgetting about it are very
> > different things.
>
> well, I meant the former. since we are in the situation of dropping
> code from the image just because their authors passed away.
>
> anyway, I'm only saying I find this sad... I don't have anything to
> propose for a change.


I understand we can only go so far to track people down.  However, it
is worth a little effort I think to keep the code if possible.  I
would imagine the copyright tends to fall to an inheritor in these
cases, barring an explicit clause in a will, which seems unlikely.

In that case, it should be possible to contact their family find the
inheritor, and ask them.


Do ask the lawyers involved.  They can tell you not only a theoretical
answer, but a practical one.  For example, it might be a practical
answer to leave some code in for a while, perhaps with a note in the
copyright info.


Lex

Craig Latta <[hidden email]> writes:
>      A list of contributors who have not returned signed agreements, and
> a list of contributors who have no known non-bouncing email address are at:
>
>      http://netjam.org/squeak/contributors
>
>      Please let me know if any information there is incorrect or incomplete.


Some of the names on there leave me sad.  We have had many people
contribute, and apparently some of them are just unknown to the
current community.

Anyway, please do not make major removals without making a second
round of efforts to find these people.  If it's someone who wrote one
or two methods, okay just remove the code.  If it's someone who
contributed a large subsystem, though, then it is very likely that a
little sleuthing will turn them up....

To that end, it would be nice if it were possible to post beside each
missing person a number of method versions with that person's
signature, if that is possible.  That way we'd all know who to focus
most on trying to find.

Also, does anyone have a code snippet around for browsing the code
written by a given address?  That is frequently a good tip-off for the
initials that have no name associated.


Lex

Hi Lex--

> Some of the names on [the initials-without-names and
> initials-and-names-without-email-addresses lists] leave me sad.  We
> have had many people contribute, and apparently some of them are just
> unknown to the current community.
>
> Anyway, please do not make major removals without making a second
> round of efforts to find these people.

     Ha! We're on the nth round already... but yes, I have no intention
of giving up on anyone, alive or dead.

> If it's someone who wrote one or two methods, okay just remove the
> code. If it's someone who contributed a large subsystem, though, then
> it is very likely that a little sleuthing will turn them up...

     We've already done much more than a little sleuthing, for several
months. And when I say "we", I'm referring to dozens of members of the
community.

> To that end, it would be nice if it were possible to post beside each
> missing person a number of method versions with that person's
> signature, if that is possible.  That way we'd all know who to focus
> most on trying to find.

     I can easily do that. So far I've held off because some people
thought showing the number of contributions each person has made would
result in hurt feelings.


     thanks again,

-C

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

Craig wrote...

>     I can easily do that. So far I've held off because some people
>thought showing the number of contributions each person has made would
>result in hurt feelings.

Possibly, and certainly in the bulk of the system it's frequently the case that the person who *really* wrote the method has been overwritten by someone who may have done nothing more than reformat it, so what is provided by this tally is closer to misinformation than information.

        - Dan

On 3/25/07, Dan Ingalls <[hidden email]> wrote:
> Possibly, and certainly in the bulk of the system it's frequently the case that the person who *really* wrote the method has been overwritten by someone who may have done nothing more than reformat it, so what is provided by this tally is closer to misinformation than information.
>
Another good argument for a Squeak Code Conservatory (or Museum :-)).
Maybe a nice summer vacation project...

(what I mean with this is a browseable, queryable (Mantis) database
containing all source code of all versions back to Squeak 1.0).

No problem Craig.

I was a bit confused with the "accepted contribution" vs VPRI agreement.

I don't know if I've some "accepted contribution" of sort of Squeak code to main Squeak image.

Cheers and also apologize my lack of understanding with this thread.

Cheers.

I just sent Bolot Kerimbaev (initials: bolot) an email; hopefully  
he'll also know how to contact Aibek.

Jeff Pierce now appears to be with IBM Research; his page there  
(including email address) is:
http://www.almaden.ibm.com/cs/people/jspierce/

Josh

On Mar 24, 2007, at 1:14 PM, Lex Spoon wrote:

Dan Ingalls <[hidden email]> writes:

Both pieces of information are important.  If I am not mistaken, the
guys doing the license change have a list of all method *versions*,
and thus can find all methods that each person contributed to, not
just the last person who touched each method.

Without such information, it is hard to figure out who people are from
their initials.  For lot of the names I recognize, I do not know the
initials.

I agree the number is not so important to post.  However, the list of
methods seems pretty innocuous.  Would anyone have their feelings hurt
by having the list of Squeak methods they have hacked be posted?


Lex

Craig Latta <[hidden email]> writes:
[...]

>      We've already done much more than a little sleuthing, for several
> months. And when I say "we", I'm referring to dozens of members of the
> community.

At least one of them is prominent on Google.  Also, FWIW, this thread
is the first I heard about a missing-people list and a deadline.  If
you made an early call for help in finding people, it did not
circulate very far.


Anyway, it's a clear sign that the community has new people in it, and
that the new folks don't even know who a lot of the older folks are.
I am not used to thinking of Squeak as being that old!


Lex Spoon

Hi Lex--

> > We've already done much more than a little sleuthing, for several
> > months. And when I say "we", I'm referring to dozens of members of
> > the community.
>
> At least one of them is prominent on Google.

     We're finding out that doesn't matter a whole lot, necessarily.
There are several people for whom it is quite easy to find an email
address on Google, but that email address bounces, so the fact that
they're on Google doesn't really matter. To make things even more fun,
we keep getting new people referring us to those dead addresses
(reminding us how easy it was to find them ;). So, it'd be nice to just
publicize the list of bouncing email addresses... but it's possible that
some of them could just be bouncing temporarily for some reason (this
has already happened with one person), so we don't publicize them so as
to avoid spam problems.

> ...this thread is the first I heard about a missing-people list and a
>  deadline.

     The deadline is new, as I mentioned in the first message of this
thread[1]. The missing-people list started on 4 November 2006, along
with the rest of the contributor database[2].

> If you made an early call for help in finding people, it did not
> circulate very far.

     I've been using squeak-dev, mentioning the contributor
information-gathering effort both in separate messages and the Squeak
Foundation board meeting notes since the initial announcement. As I
recall, you said you've been having email trouble; perhaps that explains
why you haven't seen some of the messages. I've also been talking up the
effort on the Squeak IRC channel, where there's been a link to the
contributor database in the channel topic since November.

> Anyway, it's a clear sign that the community has new people in it, and
> that the new folks don't even know who a lot of the older folks are.
> I am not used to thinking of Squeak as being that old!

     Heh, yeah; I've noticed that happening two or three times now, with
different sets of new old-timers. :)


-C

[1] http://tinyurl.com/2kdprd (lists.squeakfoundation.org)
[2] http://tinyurl.com/27knuz (lists.squeakfoundation.org)

--
Craig Latta
improvisational musical informaticist
www.netjam.org
Smalltalkers do: [:it | All with: Class, (And love: it)]

hi ale

This is really important that we get squeak free.
We got ****really**** hurt in the past because we could not get into  
linux and open-source conference.
This was reallllllly boring about 40 emails and kind of shit.
So I hope that every people willing to help squeak will sign this  
agreement and that we will get a free Squeak

Stef

On 22 mars 07, at 09:23, Alejandro F. Reimondo wrote: