>From outside this all looks as though it might suffer from being a little too >pedantic in adhering to definitional terms
As an educator I know this software to be sweeter than most for teaching and learning of say, introductory programming.. The 'scratch' version is as sweet as anything for kids learning It feels as free and open as can be, in terms of what you can see and change and modify I'm not any smalltalk talk programmer, but i get how you can access the source code and make any change whatsoever at this level.. Still...take this as wild comment from a technically naïve educator who is biased towards what works for kids learning > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:iaep- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jonas Smedegaard > Sent: Thursday, 6 November 2008 10:31 PM > To: iaep@lists.sugarlabs.org > Subject: Re: [IAEP] [sugar] Sugar on Edubuntu > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 04:38:19PM -0800, Bert Freudenberg wrote: > > > >On 05.11.2008, at 13:55, David Farning wrote: > > > >> .One sticking point was the availability of squeak on Ubuntu. If I > >> remember this issue was beaten to death before I got involved with SL. > > > >I only remember discussion of getting it into Debian, not Ubuntu. > > Sigh. Yes, it is sometimes frustration to work on a brilliant > distribution that is so frequently missing from the radar of others. :-( > > > >Basically, even though the license issues are finally resolved, they > >did not want to have it in because they do not agree with its current > >development model: > > > >http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-June/015479.html > > Here is the contents of /usr/share/doc/etoys/README.non-free on Debian: > > > Why is EToys in non-free? > ========================= > > > EToys was rejected from inclusion in the Debian main archive, because > the ftpmasters don't consider the sources as source. ;) Since we > unsuccessfully tried to convince them that EToys belongs into main > already and the time until Lenny will be frozen is short, I decided to > upload it to non-free, for the benefit of the users (so they can simply > use apt-get to install etoys, provided they have non-free in their > sources), even though we believe it satisfies all the requirements of > the DFSG [1] and policy [2]. For Lenny+1 we plan to convince the > ftpmasters to accept it in main. > > > Let me explain the source situation: > > EToys comes as an "image", a snapshot of all objects, which is loaded > into a squeakvm, modified in memory, and snapshotted to an image file > again. This image cannot easily be rebuilt from pure source code, but > the snapshots do contain all the source code. The image is the > "preferred form of modification" for the EToys developer community, this > is how they work [3]. > > The Etoys image is derived from a Squeak image which is derived from a > Smalltalk image back to 1976, when the actual bootstrapping happened. > This is in contrast to how some Lisps work, they do a lengthy bootstrap > from source and then do a memory snapshot so they can skip the > initialization at startup time. To modify that snapshot, one changes the > code and rebuilds the snapshot. But in Smalltalk, to modify the snapshot > all the source code tools "patch" live object memory directly. So we > think this kind of source form is enough to satisfy the DFSG. > > Squeak source code in text form can be seen, shared and modified from > within the squeakvm. That's what everybody does with Squeak source code. > The changes are then either available as "change sets" or as > "Monticello" packages (a version control system for Smalltalk code, see > [4]), and can be distributed separatly or used to create derived > versions of the modified blobs. But while this works for small changes, > this isn't practical to rebuild a complete image. > > > [1] http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines > [2] file:///usr/share/doc/debian-policy/policy.html > [3] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/2008- > May/128753.html > [4] http://www.wiresong.ca/Monticello/ > > > Holger Levsen, 2008-06-13 > > > > Kind regards, > > - Jonas > > > - -- > * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt > * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ > > [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > > iEYEARECAAYFAkkS1YcACgkQn7DbMsAkQLhmJwCeOJt55cqlXM1xOLb/ImoaVSUF > q5cAn18CV7rqdY4K8bDMl9onwvVlb09S > =jH4J > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > _______________________________________________ > IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) > IAEP@lists.sugarlabs.org > http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep Important - This email and any attachments may be confidential. 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