From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id HAA02554; Mon, 25 Oct 2004 07:56:14 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id HAA02236 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 2004 07:56:13 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from smtp3.adl2.internode.on.net (smtp3.adl2.internode.on.net [203.16.214.203]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.13.0/8.13.0) with ESMTP id i9P5uBdO007172 for ; Mon, 25 Oct 2004 07:56:12 +0200 Received: from [192.168.1.200] (ppp217-99.lns1.syd3.internode.on.net [203.122.217.99]) by smtp3.adl2.internode.on.net (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i9P5u5OU042539; Mon, 25 Oct 2004 15:26:06 +0930 (CST) Subject: Re: [Caml-list] licence stuff again From: skaller Reply-To: skaller@users.sourceforge.net To: Jacques Garrigue Cc: caml-list@davidb.org, caml-list In-Reply-To: <20041025.123834.26988978.garrigue@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp> References: <1098642597.3075.32.camel@pelican.wigram> <20041025025832.GA1582@old.davidb.org> <20041025.123834.26988978.garrigue@math.nagoya-u.ac.jp> Content-Type: text/plain Message-Id: <1098683764.3075.190.camel@pelican.wigram> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Ximian Evolution 1.2.2 (1.2.2-4) Date: 25 Oct 2004 15:56:05 +1000 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Miltered: at nez-perce with ID 417C957B.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail.ensmp.fr)! X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 sourceforge:01 2004:99 38,:01 jacques:01 gpl:01 interfere:01 statically:01 unencumbered:01 9660:01 glebe:01 compilers:01 ocaml:01 ocaml:01 garrigue:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Mon, 2004-10-25 at 13:38, Jacques Garrigue wrote: > On the other hand, there should be no problem loading manually a > GPL library in the toplevel, or building such a toplevel privately. This may be so (you can surely do anything you like privately, since licences based on Copyright only apply to redistribution). However, it is a pain that legal matters interfere with the technical design of software. The very same program that is fine when you use dynamic linkage may be be not fine when you statically link, for example. The problem here is that we have a community of amateurs, hobbyists, acadamics, and a couple of specialist commerical companies and we all like different licences but don't really care because either (a) we're not deriving income from our effort, we're doing it for fun or academic brownie points, and/or (b) our income is secure, and we have no need to actually sell our product. On the other hand the C++ community is mainly composed of commerical programmers -- people making a living out of cutting code. And even the vendors of libraries and compilers have a vested interest in uniformity both technical and legal. So right from the start, Boost required software to be unencumbered, and now there is a movement to formalise that with a single licence. So despite the inferior quality of the C++ platform, C++ people have large benefit from free exchange of reusable components which the Ocaml community continually denies itself because everyone seems to have some pointless political statement to make (including me :) We're *never* going to agree on a common restrictive licence, so there's only one possible way forward: an unrestrictive one. Most Ocaml people have no reason to fear being generous -- they're not going to lose any income. The people with most to lose -- commercial C++ programmers -- have shown that being generous actually works. Everyone benefits. -- John Skaller, mailto:skaller@users.sf.net voice: 061-2-9660-0850, snail: PO BOX 401 Glebe NSW 2037 Australia Checkout the Felix programming language http://felix.sf.net ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners