Swazoo under the LGPL

Hi all,

Some changes have made to the published information about how Swazoo is
licensed.  This does not change Swazoo from being licensed under the
LGPL, but it does cause confusion.

On Squeak the code is shown as being under the MIT license. When I saw
this I posted to the Squeak mailing list asking that the information be
corrected to show the LGPL.  A long thread ensued.

In the last day or so the information on SourceForge has been changed
from listing the LGPL as the Swazoo license to showing MIT instead.  The
person who did this has not admitted the fact.

Janko Mivšek has announced that discussions on the relicensing of Swazoo
will now start on the Swazoo developers mailing list.  It appears that I
have been excluded from this list, which is unreasonable since I have
made significant contributions to the older versions of Swazoo and Janko
claims to have pulled in much code from Hyper into Swazoo as well.

If you have contributed to Swazoo over the years you may well have an
interest in this too.

I specifically started with the Swazoo HTTP server for my work for
OpenSkills *because* Swazoo was licensed under the LGPL.

If there is to be any discussion of relicensing Swazoo then it must be
an open discussion and it must involve the people whose copyright works
are involved.  A private discussion on a private list will not do.

In the meantime, the documentation in SourceForge should be reverted to
show the correct license (the LGPL) and the information in Squeak should
be corrected too, lest anyone picks up Swazoo on the mistaken impression
that it is licensed under the MIT license.

All the best,
Bruce

"Bruce Badger" <bbadger@openskills.com> wrote in message
 news:vaednbE7xJZ9bXranZ2dnUVZ_rmjnZ2d@to
tallyobjects.com...
> In the last day or so the information on SourceForge has been changed from
> listing the LGPL as the Swazoo license to showing MIT instead. ...
> I specifically started with the Swazoo HTTP server for my work for
> OpenSkills *because* Swazoo was licensed under the LGPL.

Do you see the LGPL as preventing use of the licensed Smalltalk code as part
of a commercial, closed source application? Most Smalltalkers seem to hope
it wouldn't, but I prefer to avoid the risk by using something like MIT.

What do you see as the benefits of LGPL over MIT?

Cheers,
Steve

Steven Kelly wrote:
> Do you see the LGPL as preventing use of the licensed Smalltalk code as pa
rt
> of a commercial, closed source application?

I don't, but I may not be fully informed.  IANAL.

For now, the key issue with Swazoo is getting the licensing situation to
be clear (i.e. LGPL from inception to date).  Once we have clarity we
can start the, no doubt long, discussion about the merits of the various
licenses and perhaps make some changes.  This needs to be something that
involves all the contributors to Swazoo.

> Most Smalltalkers seem to hope
> it wouldn't, but I prefer to avoid the risk by using something like MIT.

I now know that some in the Squeak community feel very strongly indeed
about this.  I have the burns to prove it!

> What do you see as the benefits of LGPL over MIT?

Briefly, I like the idea of "preservation of freedoms" put forward by
the FSF and I like the idea of "share and share alike".  I don't see
those things in BSD-like licenses such as the MIT.

I don't have a clear ideas what the differences between these two
licences really is. But I do know that both you and Jancko did great
work for the community. I would prefer to see you both in agreement..

Regards,

@+Maarten


Bruce Badger a écrit :
> Steven Kelly wrote: 
>
> I don't, but I may not be fully informed.  IANAL.
>
> For now, the key issue with Swazoo is getting the licensing situation to
> be clear (i.e. LGPL from inception to date).  Once we have clarity we
> can start the, no doubt long, discussion about the merits of the various
> licenses and perhaps make some changes.  This needs to be something that
> involves all the contributors to Swazoo.
> 
>
> I now know that some in the Squeak community feel very strongly indeed
> about this.  I have the burns to prove it!
> 
>
> Briefly, I like the idea of "preservation of freedoms" put forward by
> the FSF and I like the idea of "share and share alike".  I don't see
> those things in BSD-like licenses such as the MIT.

> I don't have a clear ideas what the differences between these two
> licences really is. But I do know that both you and Jancko did great
> work for the community. I would prefer to see you both in agreement..

+1 surely there is some misunderstanding

Tim M wrote: 
>
> +1 surely there is some misunderstanding

And indeed the matter is all resolved now.  You can read the highs and
lows on the Squeak archive if your really want to, but the ending is a
happy one.  We now all agree that Swazoo is under the same licence now
that it started out with (LGPL).  Also we are starting to talk about
different license options for the future.

All the best,
Bruce