Etoys 4 Release Notes

About Etoys 4

Etoys 4 has three major new changes and many smaller improvements. Representing a year's worth of work, Etoys 4 is the last release to include the direct participation of Viewpoints Research, as their focus has always been to create prototypes and spin them out into new organizations. Viewpoints will now pass the reigns over to the newly formed Squeakland Foundation, whose mission is to "build community and encourage deep learning worldwide by promoting, supporting, and improving Squeak Etoys and related educational media."

(More detailed notes are available at http://squeakland.org/download/releaseNotes.jsp)

Etoys-To-Go

The next big change is called "Etoys-To-Go", which is a new way to install and use Etoys. Simply choose Etoys-To-Go from the download page instead of Windows, Mac, or Linux. You'll then have a portable Etoys that works on any computer that can be easily copied from machine to machine, without the added installation step. Even better, you can run Etoys-To-go directly from a USB flash drive, which means you can use Etoys on any computer without getting permission from system administrators. Your project files are saved back to the USB stick, so you can quickly save and run on your way to school. Unfortunately, Etoys-To-Go does not include our browser plugin, so if you want to browse projects on the web, you'll still need to download and install the usual Windows, Mac, or Linux version. Project files can be easily exchanged between the Etoys-To-Go, Mac, Windows, and Linux versions.

License Clean

Etoys 4 is now "license clean", which means it conforms to the requirements of free and open source systems, such as the various Linux distributions. In 1996, Apple released Squeak under their own license. In 2006, Apple relicensed the Squeak core under the Apache 2.0 license, thanks to Steve Jobs, Alan Kay, and the lawyers involved. Soon after, Viewpoints Research collected written relicensing agreements from several hundred contributors under the MIT license, thanks to Kim Rose and the Squeak community volunteers. Finally, all code in Etoys not explicitly covered by a relicensing agreement was removed, rewritten, or reverted to an earlier version, thanks primarily to the efforts of Yoshiki Ohshima. The result of this hard work is that Etoys is now completely free and open source, which means it can be used and modified by anyone in the world for whatever purpose they imagine.

Known Bugs

On Snow Leopard, the web browser plugin works unreliable in Safari. Please use Firefox until this problem is fixed.