[IAEP] scratch license (was: Next slobs meeting?)

[Jecel Assumpcao Jr.]

Chris Ball wrote on Sun, 05 Jun 2011 11:16:46 -0400
> On Sun, Jun 05 2011, Bernie Innocenti wrote:
> > The very short summary is that there are two different licenses for
> > Scratch: one for the source code, which prohibits calling the resulting
> > binary Scratch and uploading projects to the website, and one for
> > binaries, which doesn't allow modification. It's hard to notice the
> > problem, because they don't mention it even in the license FAQ.
> 
> Just a quick addition: the source license *also* prohibits commercial use.
> So, even if we accepted the rules about naming and uploading as being just
> a ham-fisted attempt to implement trademark law inside a copyright license,
> the non-commercial clause would still be a show-stopper.  :/

While I totally disagree with what they did, I understand why they did
it:

The name restrictions were a reaction to the Etoys situation, where when
you load a given version of Etoys it is very easy to find projects on
the web that won't load into it (sometimes too new, but mostly too old).
They wanted full control so that anything named Scratch that you ever
download can go to their web site and work with any of the nearly 2
million projects there. My opinion is that this is a hopeless quest
(even more ambitious than the OLPC plan to make the exact same XO for
five years), but the software is theirs to try.

The non commercial thing is simply that they were afraid of closing off
options of making money in the future with stuff like

http://www.picocricket.com/picoboard.html

The idea is that they could always open up in the future, but if they
started open then it would not be possible to restrict stuff later if
needed.

As I said, I don't like any of this and can understand if there is a
decision not to include it as a basic part of Sugar. But many children
around the world have benefited greatly from this software so it would
be important for it to be easy for them to get it.

-- Jecel