Creating deb package of MIT's programming environment for kids (Squeak based)

[Tom Hoffman]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 8:30 AM, Jordan Mantha <laserjock at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 12:26 AM, Caroline Ford
> <caroline.ford.work at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm 99.9% certain they used to have a BSD-style license so maybe you
>>> can get an earlier copy of the image.
>>
>> I've closed the bug unless anyone can find the BSD licensed version.
>>
>> We don't package non-free software.
>
> Just a little correction here. We do package non-free software, we
> just put it in the Multiverse repository and can't distribute it on
> the Edubuntu CD. Note that currently Squeak itself is non-free and in
> Multiverse so Scratch would have to go there anyway until we have a
> free Squeak (Debian's Squeak VM is free apparently, but it's a svn
> snapshot, completely different packaging, and I didn't have time in
> Hardy to work out all the bugs of switching).
>
> I've been the unofficial squeak maintainer for a couple years, but I
> don't use it at all and there are a lot of peculiarities to Squeak,
> enough that I really think a person who uses and knows squeak should
> be maintaining it. It's a relatively important educational subclass of
> packages since OLPC is using it and there are projects such as
> Squeakland and Scratch that would be great to get to educators.
> Perhaps we can find somebody who's using Ubuntu (of any kind) and
> Squeak who would be willing to learn some packaging. I'd be happy to
> help get them going, but unless someone steps forward I doubt I'm
> going to have time to do much with squeak.

There was an announcement last year I think that Squeak was going to
be relicensed under a bsd-style license (I forget which one), but I
haven't seen if this was actually done and on which versions.  The
switch was mostly inspired by OLPC, I believe.  This would have
specifically covered the original code written at Apple.  Like a lot
of old open source projects (and Squeak is ancient by software
standards) there is also a lot of code of unknown provenance in there.

--Tom