Nevertheless scratch source has been unofficially released on the scratch site by Jens:
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/Jens/22355

and a link (which currently is not working) to a linux version has been posted by dthornburg here:
http://scratch.mit.edu/forums/viewtopic.php?id=305

The official position is that Scratch is a “closed development, open source” project … the source code will be available by mid-2007 under the MIT License so that others can experiment with extensions and variations. However, unlike a conventional open source project, they do not seek code contributions from the community

Beyond that, last time I checked the application itself didn’t attempt to explain how one’s work would be licensed when you uploaded it, which further makes me doubt that the license would be binding, even for an adult, but I don’t really know. Regardless, it is bad behavior.

Further, even if the CC attribution licensing sticks, the application and its website doesn’t do anything to make it easy to keep track of or cite attribution. There is not even a specific field for citing attribution. This gets particularly complicated when you consider that an application you download may itself include multiple strings of contributions which you should technically attribute in your remix.

So there are a lot of issues, and not very easy ones to solve at that. With your kid, I’d just ignore them.

What sucks is that these problems pretty much rule out serious redistribution of work uploaded to the site. This stuff could never be put in, say, Edubuntu, which is a shame.

Also, Scratch itself exists in a weird licensing limbo. The application is essentially BSD licensed, but they haven’t literally released the code in an easily accessible way, despite their promise to do so in the $2,000,000 NSF grant proposal that funded the project.

For the free software advocate, this is all frustrating and disappointing, and it is particularly galling that they would go back on their promise in the NSF grant. Pointing this out on a post on your blog would be helpful. They deserve to take a little heat for it.

Nice inspirational post to get people started on scratch, I’ve put a link to some teacher lists in australia

I’ve been playing around more with Etoys / Squeak which may be more powerful and ships with the OLPC

It’s interesting that use agreements now need to be part of the child’s curriculum. (That’s not a judgement)

I would not be surprised if the Scratch folks had even thought of addressing that issue for kid users. I think sharing and repurposing is implicit in the interface.

A larger question might be, “Alexander, why do you think others would be interested in your version?” This is the sort of “What is your contribution to knowledge?” question asked of doctoral students.

Another view of the issue is, just because it’s easy to share, should everything be shared? (Should everything go on the refrigerator?)

By the way, I’ve been intending to sit down and write a comprehensive critique of Scratch for some time now. I’ll let you and your legions of readers know once I get it finished.

I remember programming in BASIC in far less than 64K of memory (more like 1K) and it was plenty fun.

I wrote about these seminal learning experiences here: http://stager.org/articles/meandjones.html

My larger concern is projecting an adult’s view of process and experience onto a child. For example, I am continually amazed by how intellectually stimulating and creatively expressive today’s children find “old-fashioned” (Logo) turtle graphics.

Adults often thought too little of such computer-dependent activities since the quality of the output did not match their aesthetic for what software “looks like” - ie, lots of chrome, 3-D and menus.

The Simpsons Movie success reminds us that kids like 2-D too. I even remember a Nickelodeon character that was a popsicle stick with two eyes and a mouth drawn in ballpoint pen. I believe he was “Mr. Sticky.” Kids loved him because he was funny. His resolution was of no consequence.

Alan Kay might argue that the larger reason why adults devalued Logo use by children is that the adults themselves had no language for describing the mathematical learning that was taking place.

I’m going to check it out and do a review! Thanks for bringing it up.

Kevin