[IAEP] squeak/etoys accepted as free software...

[Albert Cahalan]

Jecel Assumpcao Jr writes:
> Holger Levsen wrote:

>> IIRC/IIUC this is one aspect why the ftpmasters didnt accept
>> it in main. More generally said, (IIRC) it's because the
>> impossibility to bootstrap etoys.
>
> Is the subject correct? I mean I know we are talking about a directory
> called "non-free" but is there anyone out there that after what has been
> said still doesn't accept etoys as Free Software?

I'm not fully convinced. It is apparently free of horrible legal
problems, but it's not in a reasonable form for modification.
The freedom is not fully usable in any reasonable way.

>> Even though the etoys developers "don't do it" and the stateful VM
>> (or rather patches to it) is/are the prefered form of modification.
>
> Note that several Smalltalks can be built entirely from a set of text
> files: Self, GNU Smalltalk, Slate, Little Smalltalk and others. There is
> no technical difficulty.

The solution should be obvious: pick any one of those Smalltalks,
and port something to it. Use standard audio and image formats
for the source-free multimedia blobs.

Your choices:

A. Port the code that generates the Squeak VM executable. Port any
code needed to create a VM. Make VM creation part of the build process.
BTW, this really should be set up to allow cross-compiling, but I admit
that lots of craptastic software fails to meet this higher standard.

B. Port just Etoys, eliminating the need for Squeak. This might be
more a matter of adding multimedia stuff to a non-Squeak Smalltalk.

> But as you said, the people who can do it don't
> have any reason to do so. This leads us to the situation where there is
> a group of people who want to do something which they feel would be very
> important but they can't do it themselves and another group that could
> do it but are busy with other things. It is very easy for discussions to
> get heated under such circumstances.

It's not merely a matter of not being "people who can do it".
It's more a problem of "why should we do your work?". When you
want to join a group, you need to follow the customs and not
expect others to pick up your slack.