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 TAA11605 for caml-redistribution; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 19:57:37 +0200 (MET DST) 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 PAA22092 for ; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:21:29 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from maxime.u-strasbg.fr (maxime.u-strasbg.fr [130.79.75.36]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id PAA08780; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:21:22 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from luther@localhost) by maxime.u-strasbg.fr (8.8.7/8.8.7) id PAA09502; Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:22:52 +0200 (MET DST) Message-ID: <19990419152251.A9470@maxime.u-strasbg.fr> Date: Mon, 19 Apr 1999 15:22:51 +0200 From: Sven LUTHER To: Xavier Leroy , Markus Mottl , OCAML Subject: Re: licence issues Reply-To: luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr References: <199904160854.KAA03929@miss.wu-wien.ac.at> <19990416184022.60993@pauillac.inria.fr> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.93.2 In-Reply-To: <19990416184022.60993@pauillac.inria.fr>; from Xavier Leroy on Fri, Apr 16, 1999 at 06:40:22PM +0200 Sender: weis On Fri, Apr 16, 1999 at 06:40:22PM +0200, Xavier Leroy wrote: > 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. As the debian maintainer, i just want to add that altough there is a ocaml debian package, it is in the non-free part of debian, which some may not consider as being part of debian. > > > 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. > What i think you are missing is that with the current license, i don't think ocaml will be used as a key component of debian, or other free OS, and it is a shame, especially the bytecode compiler and the VM, would be a nice way of doing things only one time for all supported architectures, and particularly in this days where the java virtual machine is presenting some problems with linux, this could be a good thing for ocaml to become more widely accepted. But then i also understand your position, and am sure that some middle way could be reached, Friendly, Sven LUTHER