[K12OSN] Squeak License & Apple -- paging Daryl Hawes

[Tom Hoffman]

As some of you know, Squeak is an educational computing environment
developed originally at Apple by a team led by Alan Kay.  Rather than
getting bogged down in an inadequate explanation of this unique
product, I'll point you to http://squeakland.org/ for more.

As I understand it, Apple stopped funding the project around 1996 and,
much to their credit, released the code under what was intended to be
an open source license:  the Squeak License.  At this point,
corporations weren't used to dealing with open source and generally
speaking, the legal territory wasn't as well understood.  Overall, the
Squeak License is a very liberal license, but it has a few
lawyer-inspired gotchas which prevent it from meeting the Debian Free
Software Guidelines, so it is not included in the Debian distribution.
 See this page for more details: 
http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3733

This is particularly frustrating because many national and regional
governments, particularly in the developing world, are developing
custom Linux distributions to use in schools and libraries, and many
of these are based on Debian.  If Squeak isn't part of the Debian
distribution, it is harder for them to use Squeak, which is
potentially a powerful learning tool.

The problems with the license are minor and technical, and one could
argue that the Debian project should just compromise.  However, one of
the main reasons governments around the world are using Debian is
because Debian maintains such strict standards for licensing,
standards that protect the user.  For example, the current Squeak
License could leave a local third world goverment liable for
indemnifying Apple against a lawsuit.  You can see why that would be
unacceptable.

Anyhow... as far as I know, nobody has made a serious attempt lately
to get Apple to change the license.  I think the open source world is
big enough at this point that a petition drive could be effective,
since the goal would simply be for Apple to relicense Squeak under a
standard license like the MIT or BSD license.  The only cost to Apple
is a few hours of lawyer time.  They don't make any money off Squeak
now and they never will in the future anyhow.

The first step, however, is just to try to get the attention of the
right people at Apple.  I stuck Daryl Hawes name in the subject line
since he did such a great job of representing Apple at NELS.  Perhaps
he can point us to someone higher up the chain of command that might
be able to help us out.  Or perhaps someone else on the list has
useful contacts at Apple.

Regardless, your help would be appreciated.  I'm getting sick of
discussing this license on every open source in education list I'm a
member of.  I'd just like to fix the problem.

--Tom