From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id KAA05718 for caml-redistribution; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 10:03:27 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA14733 for ; Fri, 16 Apr 1999 18:40:26 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id SAA24692; Fri, 16 Apr 1999 18:40:23 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from xleroy@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id SAA04887; Fri, 16 Apr 1999 18:40:23 +0200 (MET DST) Message-ID: <19990416184022.60993@pauillac.inria.fr> Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 18:40:22 +0200 From: Xavier Leroy To: Markus Mottl , OCAML Subject: Re: licence issues References: <199904160854.KAA03929@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89.1 In-Reply-To: <199904160854.KAA03929@miss.wu-wien.ac.at>; from Markus Mottl on Fri, Apr 16, 1999 at 10:54:53AM +0100 Sender: weis > at the moment there is a thread on "comp.lang.functional" discussing > legal aspects of the OCAML-distribution policy. > Some people believe it is too restrictive and they thus rule it out for > their purposes. But I think this is mainly due to misunderstandings of > the licence and/or that the licence is not always explicit enough. The point of the license that is discussed on comp.lang.functional is how modified versions of OCaml can be distributed. What the INRIA license states (not very clearly, I agree), is that public distribution of modified versions is allowed in the form of source diffs only. Other forms of distribution (in particular as precompiled binaries) require prior authorization from INRIA. The intent of this clause is to prevent "unfair" reuse of OCaml code in projects that could be harmful to the whole OCaml effort. e.g. in competitors' projects. For instance, I believe one could make a killer Java compiler by taking the OCaml native-code generators and garbage collector and bolt them onto a Java front-end. We feel this would be an unfair use of the OCaml sources, and would compromise our research effort in the field of functional programming. A license such as the GPL doesn't address this concern: it would allow this unfair use as long as the modified version is distributed under the GPL and with source code. This is better than distribution without source code at all, but is still damageful to us. By requiring distribution as source diffs, we force users of modified versions to download the OCaml source code and apply the patches themselves. This way, they are made sufficiently aware that what they are using is nothing but a modified version of OCaml. If we allowed the distribution of precompiled binaries, this would be no longer the case. My personal feelings is that this point of the license is a bit too restrictive. However, the alternatives we know of are not restrictive enough: the classic free licenses (GPL, BSD, etc) don't protect the authors at all against unfair reuse. The INRIA license errs on the conservative side, that's all. If we could find something less restrictive but still protecting us against unfair reuse, we would gladly change the license. It should be pointed out that the current license has (as far as I know) never prevented any reasonable use of OCaml. As a case in point, Debian has an OCaml binary package because they didn't have to modify anything in the source to make their package. Similarly, the license didn't hamper the development of OLabl, which is clearly a derivative work. Finally, INRIA has never refused any requests for license exemptions that have been submitted in the past, and there are no indications that this will change in the future. > It would be a real pity if people ran away / > didn't look at OCAML due to some unclear licencing issues. It's hard to please everyone. The GPL makes some other people run away (mostly industrial users who don't want to release the source for their modifications). My hope is that while the current license might drive away a few license ayatollahs, it should not be an obstacle to all other OCaml users. - Xavier Leroy