FAQ: Licenses

License Problems

• Intro:
  I'm (Stephan Rudlof) missing an understandable summary of license conditions for Squeakers which are walkers between the commercial and noncommercial worlds.
  
• My motivation:
  I'm planning to write a Go-program and think of using Squeak to do this.
  I think that such a project results in some open source stuff. But on the other side it would be interesting for me to have the - theoretical - possibility to sell a potentially good Go-program with some parts not under open source. I know that writing a Go-program is a very ambitious task, but it's a very interesting project. A dream of mine is to earn my money with it...
  In the mailing list archive I've found different opinions about the risk of using Squeak for commercial purposes. It is not clear how to achieve a correct division into open source and commercial parts. There are some ideas and conjectures, but also a lack of facts!
  
• To read:
  
  • The current license http://www.squeak.org/license.html.
    
  • Mailing list mail about licenses from Andrew C. Greenberg, a lawyer. It is one of some articles, which a search for 'license' returns. It is difficult for me to summarize these articles to give facts, so this is just a beginning...
  
  
• Are fonts critical?
  In my opinion the passage concerning fonts in Exhibit A of the license could be critical: If all squeak programs are treaten as "Changed Software" then the Apple fonts are not useable, but how to replace them with another one?
  Think of a commercial part consisting of separate or derived classes - not mixed with Squeak classes! - working together with a changed version of Squeak which is made public. Then a simple Transcript message uses the Fonts.
  Or imagine the program has only a visual GUI and seems to be working, then after selling a few programs a *bug* arises and pops up a DEBUG window with *Apple Fonts*! At this point the program becomes illegal...
  There was a discussion over licensing fonts at the squeak mailing list, which shows that the problems are far from trivial in this field...
  A newer mail snipped regarding licences and true type fonts 12 Dec 1999: True Type Fonts from Alan Kay.

Answers

• Stephan Rudlof: In article
  Back to the Future
  The Story of Squeak, A Practical Smalltalk Written in Itself
  by Dan Ingalls, Ted Kaehler, John Maloney, Scott Wallace and Alan Kay (some Gurus of Squeak) there is written:
  
  'The Squeak license agreement explicitly grants the right to use Squeak in commercial applications royalty-free. The only requirement in return is that any ports of Squeak or changes to the base class library must be made available for free on the Internet. New applications and facilities built on Squeak do not need to be shared. We believe that this licensing agreement encourages the continued development and sharing of Squeak by its user community.'
  
  Perhaps I'm too afraid. The view of the authors seems to allow commercial parts of a project (for my planned one see above). But do the authors have control over the licensing politics of Apple/Disney?
  
  • From my reading of topical mails, I understand that no one involved in Squeak has much sway over the Squeak license. Apple holds the license, not Disney. Disclaimer -- I am not a lawyer nor a member of Squeak Central. Just an interested party. -- David Mitchell


• Stephan Rudlof: Squeak compared to GPL and/or OpenBSD