beware GNU Smalltalk if you want to contribute to squeak

Probably the best link is:

http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2002-December/050954.html

(others can be found by googling "greenberg gpl  
site:lists.squeakfoundation.org").

I misremembered slightly... Andrew's considered legal opinion was  
about the GPL, not the LGPL.  Nevertheless, he is not sanguine about  
the suitability of LGPL for image code.  Other posts in the thread  
give good examples of confusing situations.  If you add a LGPL class  
to the system, what happens when you:
        - make a subclass of the class?
        - add a method to the class?
        - etc.
The legal interpretations are unclear, to say the least.

FWIW, I can understand the FSF's reticence to clarify the situation.  
If they offered a permissive enough interpretation to be useful for  
Squeak, they might be opening up undesired loopholes that might remove  
some of the LGPL's teeth in other cases.

Josh


On Jan 10, 2008, at 2:47 PM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:

On Jan 9, 2008 4:00 AM,  <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I agree with you on using GST code for squeak is not clear. But frankly speaking,
> for me, GPL seems better one in terms of social wealth; it can make it sure that
> the result be returned to the community/society.

Except what it actually seems to (often) do is just make sure those
results aren't made at all.  That is, someone who would have taken
some software and adding very nice modifications, and even released
it, noticed it was (L)GPL and stayed away.

I know I personally release anything I make that I think is
interesting and I stay clear of GPL.  I wonder if Linux being GPL had
anything to do with Apple choosing a BSD to make their system in.

I think BSD was closer to NeXT, which is what Macs became with OS X.

On Jan 15, 2008 1:55 PM, Jason Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Jan 9, 2008 1:05 PM, Janko Mivšek <[hidden email]> wrote:
> I agree with Diego here and I'd like to ask Randal to stop spreading
> fear here and start treat licenses in spirit first, then by the letter.
> And in spirit I think GPL (and especially LGPL for Smalltalk case) is
> just fine. So, please, keep us out of those license wars. Those wars are
> not ours!
>
> Best regards
> Janko

I wish it were as Diego says.  I don't like all this license stuff.
But the fact it does matter and it doesn't matter what you or I
*think*.  It matters what the courts say.  And I think "keep us out of
those license wars" was exactly what Randal was trying to do.

In regards to treating licenses "in spirit" and the fact that GNU
Smalltalk people are nice and want to be helpful:

At a previous company I worked for there was a young man and a young
woman who fell in love and got engaged.  The young woman was quite....
hot blooded and sent the young man rather racy emails fairly often
using the company email system.  The young man liked the mails but he
didn't respond out of fear of the system sending an alert to his
manager.

Months later the young man found out the young woman cheated on him
and they ended their engagement.  At this point he dug up all those
emails and forwarded them to HR explaining that this young woman had
been sexually harassing him.  She was immediately fired and may have
even faced legal action.

The point of this story?  Just because something is ok today means it
will always be ok.  Things change.  Relationships change and even the
people involved may change.  It's my understanding that the FSF (i.e.
not the friendly folks from GNU Smalltalk) owns the copyrights.  Right
now Smalltalk isn't so much on radar but how would the FSF behave if
Smalltalk became the most popular language of all time?

Unfortunately, when it comes to these license things I think the only
thing you can depend on is what's written down because when the boss
man comes tapping on your shoulder no one is going to know or care how
you felt way back when.

On Jan 15, 2008 9:08 PM, Jason Johnson <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> The point of this story?  Just because something is ok today means it
> will always be ok.

Good grief, I actually managed to typo my own punchline. :(  "Just
because something is ok today does *not* mean it will always be ok."

> It's my understanding that the FSF (i.e.
> not the friendly folks from GNU Smalltalk) owns the copyrights.  Right
> now Smalltalk isn't so much on radar but how would the FSF behave if
> Smalltalk became the most popular language of all time?

Just to be clear, if a big chunk of code was "stolen" from GNU Smalltalk
and put into Squeak Core under MIT license, it would be *me* asking the
FSF to take action, without waiting for them to notice.  Friendly, yes;
stupid, no.

OTOH, requiring completely clean-room engineering if features are taken
from GNU Smalltalk and brought into Squeak is really over the top.  I'm
pretty sure the FSF doesn't want to be labeled as the free-software SCO...

Paolo

Hi Paolo!

Paolo Bonzini <[hidden email]> wrote:
> OTOH, requiring completely clean-room engineering if features are taken
> from GNU Smalltalk and brought into Squeak is really over the top.  I'm
> pretty sure the FSF doesn't want to be labeled as the free-software SCO...

Could you perhaps post some "policy" regarding these issues on the GNU
Smalltalk site? To make your position clear I mean (and I presume you
more or less represent the gst community).

I am not saying this is an issue, but it could prevent one from
appearing and also make it clear how much cross-breeding can still take
place. Especially since the Smalltalk community is quite "used to"
sharing code, by tradition. And it is quite common that discussions
around specific solutions go along the theme "how do they do it in
Smalltalk X/Y/Z?".

All the Smalltalk implementations and our community(ies) live in
symbiosis more or less - and I personally see benefits with all
different licensing kinds and Smalltalk implementations.

regards, Göran

>> OTOH, requiring completely clean-room engineering if features are taken
>> from GNU Smalltalk and brought into Squeak is really over the top.  I'm
>> pretty sure the FSF doesn't want to be labeled as the free-software SCO...
>
> Could you perhaps post some "policy" regarding these issues on the GNU
> Smalltalk site? To make your position clear I mean (and I presume you
> more or less represent the gst community).

I would have to contact the FSF about this.  I'll make a note.

> All the Smalltalk implementations and our community(ies) live in
> symbiosis more or less - and I personally see benefits with all
> different licensing kinds and Smalltalk implementations.

We agree on this.

Paolo

Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> Just to be clear, if a big chunk of code was "stolen" from GNU Smalltalk
> and put into Squeak Core under MIT license, it would be *me* asking the
> FSF to take action, without waiting for them to notice.  Friendly, yes;
> stupid, no.
>
> OTOH, requiring completely clean-room engineering if features are taken
> from GNU Smalltalk and brought into Squeak is really over the top.

Over the top? It rather sounds like a direct consequence of the first
paragraph. You are basically threatening to take action if you feel
something was "stolen"[*]. Without a clear definition of what that means
(i.e., under which condition use of code from GNU Smalltalk is
permissible in combination with Squeak) the only conclusion is that one
must stay away from GNU Smalltalk as far as possible to avoid potential
litigation. Which is more or less what Randal said initially.

[*] It always amuses me to find Squeak code verbatim in GST; good thing
that we can't threaten action over "stolen" code, eh? ;-) Which, to me,
completely settles the question what licenses *actually* encourage
sharing and which ones don't.

Cheers,
   - Andreas

I have to contact the FSF to get proper "thresholds" but things I
wouldn't care about would be: you take over some new feature (e.g.
generators) that is quite low-level and probably requires a good deal of
rewriting, but you copy over some comments and whatever code does not
require code.  Things I would care about would be for example the
bundled packages, but just because I'd say they could be placed on
SqueakMap with the appropriate license instead of being in Squeak Core.

> [*] It always amuses me to find Squeak code verbatim in GST

Examples, please?  Seriously, because it would be copyright violation to
bring them over without attributing properly, even if MIT license allows
relicensing.

In fact I *never* looked at Squeak except for your Semaphore>>#critical:
fixes (on which I commented here to give you the opportunity to improve
Squeak as well) and your Delay fixes (where the idea is the same in both
implementations, but ended up being rewritten -- the kind of thing I was
talking about above as a "positive" example).

See for example
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.smalltalk.squeak.general/119015/focus=119055

Paolo

Paolo Bonzini wrote:
The problem with the "I wouldn't care" approach is that it doesn't work
legally. If you were run over by a bus and someone else would take over
maintaining GST and notice that some code you wrote under (L)GPL is in
Squeak, that person might decide to take action. That's why we license
things and that's why licenses are important.

>> [*] It always amuses me to find Squeak code verbatim in GST
>
> Examples, please?  Seriously, because it would be copyright violation to
> bring them over without attributing properly, even if MIT license allows
> relicensing.

I was looking precisely at Semaphore and Delay since I was thinking that
GST may have different primitives and I was interested in learning what
they were and how the resulting solutions would differ :-) Apologies if
these are the only places that are so similar to Squeak but they just
also happened to be the only places I was interested in.

> In fact I *never* looked at Squeak except for your Semaphore>>#critical:
> fixes (on which I commented here to give you the opportunity to improve
> Squeak as well) and your Delay fixes (where the idea is the same in both
> implementations, but ended up being rewritten -- the kind of thing I was
> talking about above as a "positive" example).

Right, and I'm totally fine with that. But the point is that MIT allows
that easy kind of reuse whereas (L)GPL places unreasonable restrictions
on reuse and sharing[*]. To me, for example it's not clear whether the
amount of rewrite you did for GST would be considered "enough" by the
FSF to avoid legal troubles (personally I would doubt it since RMS seems
to have a very restrictive view on these issues).

[*] Seriously, do *you* understand the (L)GPL enough to explain what one
would have to do in practice to satisfy its requirements if one would
try to use code licensed under it in Squeak?

Cheers,
   - Andreas

> But the point is that MIT allows
> that easy kind of reuse whereas (L)GPL places unreasonable restrictions
> on reuse and sharing[*]. To me, for example it's not clear whether the
> amount of rewrite you did for GST would be considered "enough" by the
> FSF to avoid legal troubles (personally I would doubt it since RMS seems
> to have a very restrictive view on these issues).

I can ask.  In fact I already asked an opinion on a few things that
started from this thread.

> [*] Seriously, do *you* understand the (L)GPL enough to explain what one
> would have to do in practice to satisfy its requirements if one would
> try to use code licensed under it in Squeak?

Leave access to a browser (in Squeak probably the Monticello Browser
too, in GNU Smalltalk the REPL would suffice).  The idea is that the
Smalltalk monolithic image is comparable to a statically linked binary
(heresy I know...).

Paolo

>>>>> "Paolo" == Paolo Bonzini <[hidden email]> writes:

Paolo> OTOH, requiring completely clean-room engineering if features are taken
Paolo> from GNU Smalltalk and brought into Squeak is really over the top.  I'm
Paolo> pretty sure the FSF doesn't want to be labeled as the free-software
Paolo> SCO...

You have a very different impression of the FSF (as an embodiment of RMS'
goals) than I do.  I've spent a few hours with RMS directly (he was on a
week-long Geekcruise that I produced, and I've spoken at three conferences
where he was also speaking).  Tainting the Squeak core because of a copying is
*precisely* what RMS would want, and therefore likely what the FSF would
*do*.

Sure, just my opinion, as yours is yours.  But I do base my opinion on having
seen RMS up close. :)

--
Randal L. Schwartz - Stonehenge Consulting Services, Inc. - +1 503 777 0095
<[hidden email]> <URL:http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/>
Perl/Unix/security consulting, Technical writing, Comedy, etc. etc.
See PerlTraining.Stonehenge.com for onsite and open-enrollment Perl training!

Doesn't it look unfair and over exagerated?
In Squeak we can find patterns inspired from Visual Works (for example
the Observer pattern). The problem from there look much serious.
Does it mean Squeak developper should stop using VW as well?



Le mardi 08 janvier 2008 à 14:34 -0800, Randal L. Schwartz a écrit :
> Basically, keep in mind that GNU Smalltalk is GPL, and therefore,
> incompatible with Squeak's license.  Oops.  Don't look inside.  Keep
> a safe "clean-room" distance from any code in GST.
>
> Also posted on
> <http://methodsandmessages.vox.com/library/post/beware-gnu-smalltalk-if-you-work-on-squeak.html>.
>

On Jan 16, 2008 4:45 PM, Andreas Raab <[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> The problem with the "I wouldn't care" approach is that it doesn't work
> legally. If you were run over by a bus and someone else would take over
> maintaining GST and notice that some code you wrote under (L)GPL is in
> Squeak, that person might decide to take action. That's why we license
> things and that's why licenses are important.

Exactly the point I was trying to get across with my story.  Thank you.