license

Jecel Assumpcao Jr jecel at merlintec.com
Fri Dec 1 21:18:14 UTC 2000


Thanks Gordon, Dru, John, Tripp and tb(?) for your comments on the
license issue.

Dru is right that all versions of Self are freely available (though my
own versions, tinySelf 0 and tinySelf 1, don't have any explicit
license attached to them).

I have been keeping track of the GNU project since it was first created
and really support what Richard Stallman has done. There is always a
lot of confusion about "freedom": while the GPL is the more restrictive
than most "open source" alternatives, it restricts restriction and that
is a good thing, right?

Gordon is right that one good Self on machines everyone has would be
much better than a dozen half finished Selfs. But the sad truth is that
with our current communication tools we simply can't get all
electronically together to work in a single project. At least not at
the virtual machine/compiler level. One person (or local group) will
have to do it and *then* we can get together to add things at the Self
level. Other factors might be that Self (even with Dave's great
reorganization of the source) is simply more complex than Linux was at
first (at least it represents true 1990s technology while Linux doesn't
have anything in it that couldn't be seen in the late 1970s) or perhaps
we just don't get along as well as Linux Torvalds and Alan Cox ;-)

I want to make Self freely available to everyone (and intend to make
money from hardware). I would note that "machines everyone uses" would
have to mean PCs running Windows, not Linux. Of course we should have
Linux too (first, in fact, since it is easier) but to stop there would
be to continue to limit ourselves to small niches (Sparc, Macs...).

-- Jecel



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