Hi Andreas, Thank you for clarifying your position and for pointing out the lack of a proper license for WebClient code.
I and other people in the Pharo community made a mistake and we're sorry. We will be more careful in the future. But to our defense, as others pointed out, you're communications gave the impression that this was true open source, compatible with the standard Squeak one in spirit. Futhermore, and this to your credit as well, you yourself wrote the WebClient-Pharo package, giving the impression that you valued that port. It also proves that you did the actual effort. Thanks you! And indeed, you did incorporate some changes, so the intention was certainly there. Now, I would not say that we already actually forked the code. We just tried to port it. The process of following your progress proved difficult (you probably made a diff between your and our latest versions), precisely because of some of these little things like #asString, #utf8Encoding, #and:and:and:and:, but also some deeper ones like #pathForFile that kept coming back. You have every right to refuse to follow the Pharo Smalltalk spirit or style. I respect that, and the Pharo community as a whole should too. But your refusal to do so and the lack of a license give us no alternative than to look for other solutions. I wasn't there when the discussion that let to the birth of Pharo took place. But it is clear that the Smalltalk community is too small to not work together. The Smalltalk-80 inheritance and the enormeous contributions of the Squeak community over the years should be respected by all. At the same time you cannot ignore the positive effect that Pharo had since then. For me and many others, Pharo definitively has its place, along many other viable Smalltalk implementations. Regards, Sven On 30 Aug 2010, at 00:00, Andreas Raab wrote: > Hi Sven, > > [cc: pharo list since I think there are some larger issues to discuss] > > First of all thank you for your continued interest in WebClient. It is nice > to see that people like to use it. However, I'm more than a bit surprised > about what you are saying below about having WebClient in Pharo 1.2. > Honestly, I was dumbfounded when I went to read some of the discussions on > the Pharo list. > > May I ask what the due diligence process is for including packages in Pharo? > I would have expected that the process includes 1) checking the project page > on SS for the license and 2) sending the author a courtesy note along the > lines of "hey we want to include your code, are you okay with that?" (in > particular if the author of the package isn't on the Pharo list and > consequently has no clue about what you're doing). > > 1. Regarding WebClient's license, please have a look at any of the following > repositories, all of which are under MIT: > > http://www.squeaksource.com/Balloon3D.html > http://www.squeaksource.com/CroquetGL.html > http://www.squeaksource.com/ToolBuilder.html > http://www.squeaksource.com/TweakCore.html > ... etc ... > > As you can see, when I mean to put code under the MIT license, I try to state > that by including a copy of the license on the front page of the repository > as well as setting the license field. Contrary to, for example, the following > repositories: > > http://www.squeaksource.com/ar.html > http://www.squeaksource.com/SqueakSSL.html > http://www.squeaksource.com/WebClient.html > > which are not (or not yet) under MIT. Obviously, I'm trying to be as clear as > possible on these matters, which is why I was pointing out that your > repository incorrectly claims that the version of WebClient in it is LGPLv2. > I'm surprised (and shocked) that apparently nobody in Pharo even tries to > find out what the license status for WebClient is. > > 2. Regarding my intentions / position you'll have to keep in mind that I > don't read the Pharo list. I tried to follow it in the past only to be faced > with several vicious attacks against Squeak and myself and as a consequence I > stopped reading it. Consequently, this is the first time anyone has ever > mentioned the inclusion of WebClient in Pharo to me. > > In short, my position is that we need more shared libraries, not more forks. > You will probably see the irony that I specifically didn't set a license on > WebClient to prevent such forks without any prior discussion (under the > hopelessly naive assumption that there would be some sort of due diligence > process) only to find out that you've forked WebClient already. How very > ironic indeed. > > Because of my position above, I think WebClient should be an external > package, loaded for example via Metacello configuration. In fact, that's > exactly why I provided a Metacello configuration to begin with. Can someone > perhaps explain where the urge to include (and consequently fork) WebClient > comes from? WebClient is a perfectly good external package and for the time > being I prefer it should stay that way. If you want to replace HTTPSocket, > then have a look at Squeak 4.2 which contains a very simple HTTPSocket > implementation that has hooks so that WebClient will be used if it's loaded. > > Regarding fixes for Pharo, as far as I know the only changes that I haven't > included was a bunch of #asString sprinkled all over the places, and the > abominations of replacing #squeakToUtf8 and #utf8ToSqueak with > "convert[From|To]WithConverter: UTF8TextConverter new". On both of these > issues I feel very strongly; I will not make the code substantially worse > only to deal with shortcomings of Pharo. So if you cannot come to a > reasonable resolution for these, you'll need the extension methods. Outside > of that, I believe that not only have I integrated all the fixes that have > been sent to me, I have also added several patches to WebClient-Pharo that > provide important fixes for (in Pharo broken) network operations without > which WebClient would not work in any released Pharo versions. > > Summary: > * I'm surprised and I'm shocked to see that there is apparently no due > diligence regarding new packages in Pharo. I find this in particular shocking > giving the wild claims on the Pharo web site that "From the beginning of > Pharo we have maintained a strict rule that every contributor has to sign our > license agreement." I haven't. (and geez, when did Michael got dropped from > the Pharo board?) > > * I don't want WebClient to be included in Pharo since this means you will be > producing a Pharo-only fork of WebClient which is counter-productive from my > perspective. I want WebClient to remain a shared loadable package with a > canonical source repository available to all forks of Squeak, including Pharo. > > * I have, and will continue to do so, integrate fixes for Pharo as long as I > consider them reasonable. If there is interest, I can also provide an updated > Metacello configuration; although that really just boils down to updating it > to the latest package versions. > > Cheers, > - Andreas _______________________________________________ Pharo-project mailing list Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr http://lists.gforge.inria.fr/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pharo-project
