[squeak-dev] Squeak and the iPhone

Hi bert

john is travelling to the Smalltalk Solutions and here is the email he  
addressed to the ESUG board.

" Let me assure you the code was going to be released under the MIT
license when some/any foundation contributed some funding, which of  
course ESUG has done.

However to lower any concern or questions that ESUG has about what is  
going on I can forward you a copy of the source tree based on your
email about the approval of ESUG funding for this work.

I ask however not to distribute it at this time since I am about to  
refactor it for preparation for the os-x subtree and do not want to leak
source code I am about to discard, and I need to go back and add the  
funding by ESUG comment to each file once I see the ESUG announcement.

But as a gesture of good faith I'll ensure you have a working copy in  
your hands to address any concerns the board might have about never  
seeing the code.
Obviously you can check the file dates and licenses within each file  
to see that Meriks' comments are false accusations.
Please let me know if I need to take this step.

I'll address a note to Merik later once I deal with checking into  
Smalltalk Solutions, returning a rental car, having
an espresso etc."

I replied to john that we ESUG liked his email and trusted him (this  
may look a bit old fashioned nowadays but this is a value
we like). And of course ESUG does only found open-source effort and we  
like MIT.

Stef (on the behalf of ESUG).


On Jun 17, 2008, at 5:55 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:

On Jun 17, 2008, at 6:08 AM, Merik Voswinkel wrote:

> Hello Marcel,
>
....
> As you may have noticed, John McIntosh is not releasing the source  
> code of the Cocoa iPhone VM and will only sell his future version  
> and only if Apple agrees

....

I think the ESUG email from Stef  (at 7:32 am PDT) has laid the above  
comment to rest.

"and only if Apple agrees"

The confusion here is that I legally cannot offer a fully functioning  
Squeak VM/image on the iPhone to download from the app store
because of Apple's contract.

Although people have suggest I should just ignore Apple's contract, I  
not they would appear in a court of law in California.

People who know me understand I wouldn't sign, then break legal  
contracts on purpose.

I have however started a process within Apple to see if we can change  
things.

Lastly Apple's  Ad-Hoc application distribution process looks like it  
would side-step the rules imposed
for the application store, however someone in the community would need  
to take on managing that process.

As mentioned in my first note about the iPhone VM, I had offered to  
the community a way for folks to sell their squeak based application  
thru the app store without
running the hurdle of becoming an app store vendor, this of course is  
not free to the app developer because of the legal concerns I then  
take on.
You do of course have to meet Apple app store legal requirements.

Process of development.

I must say I've not heard as much noise about how things are done in  
the VM platform development process for years. Perhaps this is because  
of licensing concerns and general expanding interest in Squeak.

So the approach I've taken is to clear my head and "burn the disk packs"

(a) I've sat down and looked at the existing carbon, unix and windows  
VM source code to document the platform API, like so:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
sqInt sqGetFilenameFromString(char * aCharBuffer, char *  
aFilenameString,
                                                          sqInt filenameLength, sqInt resolveAlias)
Parms: aCharBuffer location to put encoded C string.
        aFilenameString location of the squeak encoded byte string containing  
the file name
        filenameLength length of the file name in aFilenameString
        resolveAlias. True if we should resolve any alias file information

return: NONE, fake return of zero
From: file plugin
Why:  to decode squeak file name to platform encoding and resolve  
aliases
Responsibility:
Typically take the file/path bytes and convert from the image  
character encoding to the platform encoding
On the macintosh and unix systems if resolveAlias is TRUE we must  
resolve the path/file name as a possible alias.
For example
sqFileDeleteNameSize, sqFileRenameOldSizeNewSize both say not to  
resolve the alias because we want to delete or rename the alias file
not the target.
sqFileOpen does call with true to resolve the alias because we want to  
open the target of the alias file, not the alias file.
MacIntosh

iPhone
Unix
lstat and S_ISLNK is used to determine if a symbolic link, and  
readlink to read the link
after this on Darwin any macintosh finder alias files are resolved.
BUGS multiple macintosh finder alias files  in the path make this break

Windows
....

Generic
BUGS possible buffer overflow because length is implied to be 1000 and  
not guarded by caller.
BUGS calls just assume it works, but it could fail if name with null >  
1000 or if encoding/decoding fails.
-------------------------------------------

This documentation will appear on a wiki somewhere once I finish the  
Window VM review.

Given that, I've written new obj-c code using the follow license  
template placed in each file:

//  Created by John M McIntosh on 5/22/08.
//  Copyright 2008 Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd. All rights  
reserved.
//
/* Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
*  obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
*  files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
*  restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
*  copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
*  copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
*  Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
*  conditions:
*
*  The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
*  included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
*
*  THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
*  EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
*  OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
*  NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
*  HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
*  WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
*  FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
*  OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
*/
//

I have one file (ioSeconds)  so far that is marked as below since I  
decided to carry the ioSeconds routine forward.

  *
  *  Created by John M McIntosh on 5/12/08.
  *  Copyright 2008 Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd. All rights  
reserved.
  *
  *   Small parts of this code is
  *   Copyright (C) 1996-2007 by Ian Piumarta and other authors/
contributors
  *                              listed elsewhere in this file.
  *   All rights reserved.
  */
/* Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person...

Ian's unix code was re-licensed via MIT.

After completing the basic iPhone port and the basic os-x structure I  
do plan to go back and review the two Obj-C ports, one by Ian Piumarta,
and the other by Marcel Weiher, if I recall correctly Marcel's version  
supported Squeak as an Obj-C framework. However  before I can do that
Marcel has to re-distribute his source code first with proper  
licensing to his satisfaction since it reads as below and I  currently  
couldn't consider any of it.

//  SqueakApplication.m
//  CocoaSqueak
//
//  Created by marcel on Tue Mar 27 2001.
//  Copyright (c) 2001 __CompanyName__. All rights reserved.
//


No doubt (hopefully) people might question the code base once it's  
pushed into the squeakvm.org SVN tree.

Lastly each time I discuss the VM port with other Squeakers I just add  
more to my work list, so if you are at Smalltalk Solutions 08, please  
hunt me
down to comment.

So is this process correct? Well it's the current one I'm following,  
people can email if they can propose alternate ideas/processes.


--
=
=
=
========================================================================
John M. McIntosh <[hidden email]>
Corporate Smalltalk Consulting Ltd.  http://www.smalltalkconsulting.com
=
=
=
========================================================================

On 18-Jun-08, at 11:14 AM, John M McIntosh wrote:
Minor suggestion - tag that license info as being the MIT license.  
Otherwise I guarantee there will be people complaining about it being  
not a proper OSS license.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; [hidden email]; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
How come it's 'Java One' every year? Aren't they making any progress?

On Jun 18, 2008, at 11:14 , John M McIntosh wrote:
>
> After completing the basic iPhone port and the basic os-x structure  
> I do plan to go back and review the two Obj-C ports, one by Ian  
> Piumarta,
> and the other by Marcel Weiher, if I recall correctly Marcel's  
> version supported Squeak as an Obj-C framework.

Yes.  It carefully separates different aspects so you can have custom  
apps or even command-line tools (no GUI or WindowServer interaction  
required) that run Squeak images.

> However  before I can do that
> Marcel has to re-distribute his source code first

The source code has been made available again at

        http://www.metaobject.com/downloads/Squeak/

> with proper licensing to his satisfaction since it reads as below  
> and I  currently couldn't consider any of it.

I can update that quickly.  In the meantime, you have my express  
permission to use it under an MIT license.

Leveraging outside resources can help reduce that workload...

Marcel

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 2:14 PM, John M McIntosh <[hidden email]> wrote:

what about android, that shouldnt be to hard, except, its all java :(




--
David Zmick
/dz0004455\
http://dz0004455.googlepages.com
http://dz0004455.blogspot.com

On Jun 23, 2008, at 7:14 PM, Stephen Pair wrote:

> I read the SDK agreement, and while I'm not a lawyer, I think the  
> essential question is whether the source code to an application is  
> equivalent to the application itself.  The agreement places various  
> restrictions on what an "Application" can do and defines what an  
> Application is, but is ambiguous in this matter.

The SDK agreement is mostly about releasing binaries, I think.

> What is clear is that Apple doesn't want people writing applications  
> distributed via the AppStore that enables the installation of other  
> applications thereby bypassing the controls they have in place with  
> the AppStore.

You are right, and this is where any current Squeak image and VM will  
fail their criteria. The European Apple developer contact simply said  
"never, no way we will allow that, it is illegal", so that is their  
'official' opinion. But they will only pull such an app from the App  
store after it has been submitted, so beware.
They also explicitly will not allow any VM not under Apple's control  
(like Squeak or Flash).

> I think you would be fine publishing the source code of the squeak  
> iphone VM under MIT (and perhaps even compiled versions that a  
> person in the dev program could use to actually install a running  
> squeak on a real iPhone).  It would then be a matter of anyone using  
> that source code to build an application for the iPhone to make sure  
> they were in compliance with all the Apple restrictions if they  
> intended to distribute their application via the AppStore.

Yes, you can publish source code in any case. But compiling under the  
SDK means stripping out everything that makes Squeak so interesting  
IMHO.

> Of course, it would be ideal to have a full, unrestricted squeak  
> available on the iPhone, but that is clearly at odds with the SDK  
> agreement.

I agree. So we are releasing our Squeak VM binaries in its  
unrestricted form, compiled with the GNU toolchain under Xcode. All  
iPhone apps made until now, including those Apple makes themselves,  
are of this unrestricted kind.  These apps can also access much more  
API's than those in the SDK.
Recall that more than 40% of all iPhones are already 'jailbroken' (sim  
lock removed), a term that means you can simply download any binary  
distributed outside the  App Store.

> But I think that's a separate point of consideration from whether  
> you could distrubute the source code of an iPhone VM under MIT and  
> outside the AppStore program.  I would view the distribution of  
> iPhone VM sources as equivalent to a developer sharing various  
> frameworks to aid in the construction of iPhone applications.  I  
> would think Apple would encourange and not try and restrict that  
> sort of thing.

Apple representatives even went a step further and advised us to  
release our binaries outside the App store.

So the discussion in this thread is not really about releasing source  
code or not, this thread discussion is about releasing binaries inside  
or outside the App store.
We clearly choose to do the latter, to preserve the spirit of the open  
source movement (that also implies free and open binaries, I think).
It is in the interest of the users after all, the only consideration  
that really matters.

Releasing only through the App store under Apple's contract is  
therefore about selling the Squeak VM.
Our version will be free, the same as all VMs up to now. Why break  
that tradition?

Merik

On Jun 24, 2008, at 4:47 AM, David Zmick wrote:

> what about android, that shouldnt be to hard, except, its all java :(


Yes, we are planning to do something on the Google Phones, but have  
not decided if we want to do it on top of Android (maybe with Dan  
Ingalls JSqueak ?) or bypassing it with SqueakNOS. Maybe we need  
backwards compatibility as well, with hacks like GLMorphic for speed?

In a week or so I will have our roadmap for our project published on  
our website. It is about a full multi touch interface ( http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/65 
  ) integrated with Morphic 3 and with slow devices like mobile phones  
in mind.  In our roadmap you will see that our team (still in the  
process of forming) targets all platforms that can support multi  
touch, like the iPhone, Google Phone, OLPC Xo 2.0 (with two multi  
touch screens http://blog.laptopmag.com/first-look-olpc-xo- 
generation-20 ) and of course Windows, Mac OS X and Linux with the Wii  
as the (first) multi touch device ( http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/245 
  ).

Of course this project is a very large amount of coding, and we would  
be very happy if we even get part of this list realized!
Don't interpret this post as a promise that we will actually deliver  
all this. Only time will tell.

If you want to see all this happen, consider participating, the best  
way you can make sure your platform will be supported.

Merik

El 6/24/08 10:15 AM, "Merik Voswinkel" <[hidden email]> escribió:


Having a modest suite of second hand computers for all platforms (iPod
touch, Mac Tiger and Leopard, Windows Xp and SimplyMepis Linux)  and
expertise in Squeak reduced and "ad-hoc" images, I like help if you think I
could.
Feel free in contact private if you need to.

Edgar

Merik,
Feel free to contact us if any of the experiencies and devices
 shown at http://www.aleReimondo.com.ar/Multitouch
 are considered valuable for your project.
cheers,
Ale.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Merik Voswinkel" <[hidden email]>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list"
<[hidden email]>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:15 AM
Subject: Re: [squeak-dev] Squeak and the iPhone

squeakNOS on android would be really cool, and, I would love to help, but I dont have time to work on my own projects, but, if i see anything, I will make sure to see what I can do!




--
David Zmick
/dz0004455\
http://dz0004455.googlepages.com
http://dz0004455.blogspot.com