licence issues

licence issues

[Markus Mottl]

Hello,

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.

Could someone of the OCAML-team who is in charge of this please clarify
some points in the thread? It would be a real pity if people ran away /
didn't look at OCAML due to some unclear licencing issues.

Best regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl

Re: licence issues

[Xavier Leroy]

> 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

Re: licence issues

[William Chesters]

Xavier Leroy writes:
 > 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.

   I'm sure everyone will understand and respect your point of view,
but many will consider it mistaken.

   You are quite right that you have made something special and
valuable.  And if the licence is very free, then there is a good
chance that other people will find your code base useful in the sort
of way you suggest.  If that happens, you will have made an even
bigger contribution to the public good than you have already, and you
will, whatever happens, get a significant portion of the credit.  Who
knows, maybe the OCaml backend could become quite widely used,
spreading the fruits of your research into the wider world and
becoming a Trojan horse for the language proper.

   If the licence is more restrictive then it won't happen and your
work is virtually certain to remain more or less marginal to the
mainstream industry.  It won't reach critical mass: look at the
influence and resources it took to make Java more or less acceptable.
You will get 100% of the credit but it will be 100% of a smaller cake.

   It seems strongly to me that the objectives of world domination for
OCaml, fair recognition for the achievements of the Cristal team, and
the realisation of all the public good latent in the work, are all
best served by a liberal licence.

   This is the standard theory of open source economics and I think
it's mostly true.

   There, my 2p.  It's not a big deal, and of course, noone is going
to start a flamewar or give up using OCaml whatever you do ...

(P.S. keep up the good work!)

Re: licence issues

[Xavier Leroy]

> [Hypothetical Java compiler reusing the OCaml back-end]
>    You are quite right that you have made something special and
> valuable.  And if the licence is very free, then there is a good
> chance that other people will find your code base useful in the sort
> of way you suggest.  If that happens, you will have made an even
> bigger contribution to the public good than you have already

I agree that in the long term reuse of free source code is generally
beneficial to the public as a whole, and it's definitely the goal of
government-funded research to offer its results to everyone.  (Also, if
we were that afraid of baddies stealing our ideas, we wouldn't
distribute the source code at all.)

However, there are two problems with the argument above.

First, it assumes that the reuse of OCaml code cannot harm the development
of OCaml itself.  But this is not necessarily so.  In the silly
scenario I mentioned, I can already hear INRIA's management telling me
"Ok, you told us that Caml and functional programming and type
inference and so on are good. We believed you. We supported you during
many years. Now the main outcome of your effort is a Java compiler
developed by others who get all the credit for it. And you still want
us to support you ?"  All these long-term benefits of open source are
not going to make much good if we get killed in the short term.

> , and you
> will, whatever happens, get a significant portion of the credit.

This is the other problem.  My experience is that this is not always so.
For instance, how many users of Moscow ML know that the compiler and
runtime system come straight from Caml Light?  The MoML authors did
everything right (putting copyright notices on all files,
acknowledging INRIA in their Readme files).  Still, I don't think we
got any credit (in the general sense) from this code reuse.

This is a very touchy topic for research.  Research lives off peer and
public recognition, just like commercial software lives off sales.

>    This is the standard theory of open source economics and I think
> it's mostly true.

I'm familiar with that theory.  By the way, my yougest baby,
LinuxThreads, is under the LGPL.  But it's not a research project,
just a hobby.  The open source economics don't take into account a
number of factors that are important for research, such as:

- The need to maintain some competitive edge in order to justify one's
existence (research that doesn't have any edge over what others are
doing is a contradiction in terms);

- The need to get exact credit for one's work (the system of journals
and conferences does it quite well for research papers; no equivalent
system exists for source code yet).

I wish open-source "ayatollahs" (as I called them before) could
think about these issues rather than just bullying everything that
is not GPL.  (The latter takes a lot less thinking, of course.)

All the best,

- Xavier Leroy

Re: licence issues

[Brian Rogoff]

On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> ... snip ...
> 
> I wish open-source "ayatollahs" (as I called them before) could
> think about these issues rather than just bullying everything that
> is not GPL.  (The latter takes a lot less thinking, of course.)

I don't think the name calling is deserved. "Open source" is not the same
as GPL. The person who asked me about OCaml prefers public domain, not
GPL, and is hardly an "ayatollah". 

Since we are inventing hypothetical scenarios, try this one: INRIA stops
funding the Caml project, for whatever reason. OCaml users are left
"orphaned", as it is not clear who takes over, and begin the switch to 
SML and Haskell, or, much worse, C++, Perl, and Visual basic ;-). As a 
former Amiga and NextStep user, fear of being orphaned is a concern.

I think the trick is to find a way to satisfy the valid concerns of the 
OCaml developers and the trepidations of some users. Perhaps if there were 
another version of OCaml (like the Bigloo based Caml Light) under the GPL 
or a similar license these concerns would be lessened.

-- Brian

Re: licence issues

[Xavier Leroy]

> Since we are inventing hypothetical scenarios, try this one: INRIA stops
> funding the Caml project, for whatever reason. OCaml users are left
> "orphaned", as it is not clear who takes over, and begin the switch to 
> SML and Haskell, or, much worse, C++, Perl, and Visual basic ;-). As a 
> former Amiga and NextStep user, fear of being orphaned is a concern.

I was expecting this scenario to come up at some point in the
discussion.  In the (presently unlikely) event that INRIA would pull
the plug out of the Caml project, we would of course do everything
possible so that the sources are released under a very liberal licence
so that others can continue the development if they wish.

You're right that this kind of code release hasn't been done often in
the past, especially by corporations, but it is becoming much more
commonplace now (see e.g. the MLJ project at Persimmon, or the
cancelled Java JIT project at Netscape).  It is also very much in the
spirit of public research.

> I think the trick is to find a way to satisfy the valid concerns of the 
> OCaml developers and the trepidations of some users.

Agreed.  Some participants in this discussion have made interesting
contributions in this direction, and I thank them.

> Perhaps if there were 
> another version of OCaml (like the Bigloo based Caml Light) under the GPL 
> or a similar license these concerns would be lessened.

I'm not sure I follow you here.  Are you suggesting some form of code
split?  How would this solve the issue?

Best regards,

- Xavier Leroy

Re: licence issues

[Brian Rogoff]

On Wed, 21 Apr 1999, Xavier Leroy wrote:

> > Since we are inventing hypothetical scenarios, try this one: INRIA stops
> > funding the Caml project, for whatever reason. OCaml users are left
> > "orphaned", as it is not clear who takes over, and begin the switch to 
> > SML and Haskell, or, much worse, C++, Perl, and Visual basic ;-). As a 
> > former Amiga and NextStep user, fear of being orphaned is a concern.
> 
> I was expecting this scenario to come up at some point in the
> discussion.  In the (presently unlikely) event that INRIA would pull
> the plug out of the Caml project, we would of course do everything
> possible so that the sources are released under a very liberal licence
> so that others can continue the development if they wish.

That's enough to satisfy me, though to be fair I was not bothered by the 
current license.

> > I think the trick is to find a way to satisfy the valid concerns of the 
> > OCaml developers and the trepidations of some users.
> 
> Agreed.  Some participants in this discussion have made interesting
> contributions in this direction, and I thank them.
> 
> > Perhaps if there were 
> > another version of OCaml (like the Bigloo based Caml Light) under the GPL 
> > or a similar license these concerns would be lessened.
> 
> I'm not sure I follow you here.  Are you suggesting some form of code
> split?  How would this solve the issue?

Yes. This would solve the issue (and create many nastier new ones) by
letting those who have problems with the INRIA licensing use the
GPL/BSD/whatever version. Also, it would shoot down the criticism of OCaml 
that it is a language defined by its current implementation. That said, I 
think its a bad idea, as it takes too much time from the OCaml team and 
community to have multiple variants at this stage of the language
development. Once the language design is "done", it may not be such a bad
idea, but from what I gather OCaml is still a research project and not a 
frozen standard.

-- Brian

PS: I suggest that when the design is done, the new language be named
    ML-2000, for the obvious humor value ;-)

Re: licence issues

[Sven LUTHER]

On Wed, Apr 21, 1999 at 10:08:09PM +0200, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> > Perhaps if there were 
> > another version of OCaml (like the Bigloo based Caml Light) under the GPL 
> > or a similar license these concerns would be lessened.
> 
> I'm not sure I follow you here.  Are you suggesting some form of code
> split?  How would this solve the issue?

another free ocaml implementation, even if it is not as efficient as the
official on, will help on the following problem for debian.

Right now every program depending on ocaml cannot be in the main part of
debian even if it is free, because it cannot be run and build with only the
main component of debian. If you had a free implementation, this should not be
a problem, since it would be possible to install and compile programs with the
free compiler and VM, but also install the non-free one, if one feels like it.

i understand that this is not possible and would reauest some work on your
part, but maybe a scheme where you guard the current license for most of ocaml,
but release a free version wich would miss the more critical component that you
don't want to loose control over ? or even you could release the native code
compiler, but not the virtual machine, or something like this ?

Friendly,

Sven LUTHER

Re: licence issues

[Sven LUTHER]

On Tue, Apr 20, 1999 at 10:23:36AM +0200, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> >    This is the standard theory of open source economics and I think
> > it's mostly true.
> 
> I'm familiar with that theory.  By the way, my yougest baby,
> LinuxThreads, is under the LGPL.  But it's not a research project,
> just a hobby.  The open source economics don't take into account a
> number of factors that are important for research, such as:
> 
> - The need to maintain some competitive edge in order to justify one's
> existence (research that doesn't have any edge over what others are
> doing is a contradiction in terms);
> 

To support Xavier Leroy here, even the FSF admit that open source models are
not adapted for software that is on the leading edge of technology, altough
they mostly cite voice recognition and other such stuff, i think this apply
also to research based software.

Perhaps a 'research' specific 'free' license would advance this thread ...

Friendly,

Sven LUTHER

Re: licence issues

[Sven LUTHER]

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

Re: licence issues

[Brian Rogoff]

On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Markus Mottl wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> 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.

I've heard this question asked too by other "open source" advocates, and 
I'd also be interested in the answer. As Markus notes, it would be a 
real pity if confusion over the licensing issue precludes greater use of
this outstanding tool.

On a related note, the article http://caml.inria.fr/ercim.html discusses 
the creation of a "Caml Consortium". Is this still happening? 

-- Brian

> 
> Could someone of the OCAML-team who is in charge of this please clarify
> some points in the thread? It would be a real pity if people ran away /
> didn't look at OCAML due to some unclear licencing issues.
> 
> Best regards,
> Markus Mottl
> 
> -- 
> Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl
> 
> 

Re: licence issues

[Michel Mauny]

Brian Rogoff wrote/écrivait (Apr 16 1999, 09:41AM -0700):

> On a related note, the article http://caml.inria.fr/ercim.html discusses 
> the creation of a "Caml Consortium". Is this still happening? 

Everything is still under discussion, and progressing slowly.

You can be sure that if something happens, it will be posted in the
appropriate groups, this mailing-list being the first one!

Best regards,

-- 
Michel Mauny
----------------------------------------------
INRIA  --  BP 105 --  F-78153 Le Chesnay Cedex
Tel.: +33 1 39 63 57 96 Fax: +33 1 39 63 56 84
Email: Michel.Mauny@inria.fr
WWW: http://www.inria.fr/Michel.Mauny
----------------------------------------------

Re: licence issues

[Pierre Weis]

> On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Markus Mottl wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > 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.
> 
> I've heard this question asked too by other "open source" advocates, and 
> I'd also be interested in the answer. As Markus notes, it would be a 
> real pity if confusion over the licensing issue precludes greater use of
> this outstanding tool.

You are right, but you know, nowadays, it's a kind of a religious war:
you must have been baptized under the GPL to be declared a ``free''
man (sorry, I meant software). This is not so simple, since the GPL is
not a silver bullet, it is not that clear and not that handy,
particularly if you want to distribute your software in a large
circle, even away from the academic areas. It's so clear that the
Gnu team has been obliged to design a new licence devoted to
libraries. But people that have not spent several hours to carefully
study the GPL and try to find out its meaning, are absolutely sure
that it is very simple and clear: in short, the GPL is ``the definition''
of free software. With this axiom in mind, everything is simple to
explain and state:
           GPL = free software (good), and conversely
       non GPL = non free software (bad).

So, if your licence is the GPL you belong to the free software (upper)
class, otherwise you're not free and thus you are suspected of something
(may be you plan to try to exploit somebody somewhere ?), at least it
is true that you can be suspected to suspect the GPL as not being
``the licence''!

Let me state a few points about the ``freeness'' and ``openness'' of
Objective Caml, without the above axioms in mind.

First, our software is completely free in the sense ``free of
charges'': so free of charges that you can freely get its CD-ROM, just
writing a letter to INRIA with your name and adress (see
http://pauillac.inria.fr/caml/FAQ/general-eng.html for details). This
way, anybody can easily get the compiler even though he or she is
living in a country that is not well connected to the internet, or
just possesses a slow modem to browse the WEB. This free distribution
of the compiler is kindly offered by INRIA and the french government.

Second, Objective Caml's licence is a free licence in the common
sense: you can use the compiler as you like, you can redistribute it
as you like, you can read and modify the sources of the compiler as
you like. You can redistribute your modified sources of our compiler,
provided you let us easily prove that your modified software is based
on Objective Caml (and the simplest way for you and for us is that you
distribute patches that clearly identify what is your work and what is
our work). To consider this licence as being restrictive, compared to
any commercial licence (including comparison with Microsoft's ``free
software'' notion) is just a joke or a useless flame.

If this licence is not suitable to somebody, I suppose that the
following clause is the problem: you cannot redistribute binaries
built from modified sources of the compiler. In fact, except the one
discussed below, I don't see any strong reason to bypass the
application of this clause, except if ``somebody'' wants to distribute
our compiler or part of our compiler, without clearly mentioning that
``somebody'''s software is based on Objective Caml.  This would be a
problem if these modified sources are redistributed as if they were
those of the original compiler (for bug reports for instance), or
evidently if no mention of the original sources are made. That's
exactly to avoid these kind of unfair behaviours that this clause has
been added to the copyright.

Otherwise, this clause just prevents you from distributing binaries
containing the compiler. If you want to do so, you must ask INRIA,
just to make it clear that we know what you've done and you know that
we know and that your job doesn't hurt ours. It has to be mentioned
that there is no known example of somebody asking a dispensation for a
fair reason and getting a refusal from INRIA.

> On a related note, the article http://caml.inria.fr/ercim.html discusses 
> the creation of a "Caml Consortium". Is this still happening? 

Yes, this is work in progress, and this licensing matter clearly has
to be re-examined at this occasion.

Best regards,

Pierre Weis

INRIA, Projet Cristal, Pierre.Weis@inria.fr, http://cristal.inria.fr/~weis/

Re: licence issues

[Dave Berry]

At 19:53 19/04/99 +0200, Pierre Weis wrote:
>You are right, but you know, nowadays, it's a kind of a religious war:
>you must have been baptized under the GPL to be declared a ``free''
>man (sorry, I meant software).

I find the most useful definition is not "free software", but "Open Source
software".  This has a broader definition than just GNU.  If you look at
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html, you'll see both the accepted definition
of "Open Source", and links to several example licenses.  This is the
definition used by Linux distributors, which gives some practical incentive
to adopt an Open Source licence.

It is, of course, up to you whether you want to make O'Caml "Open Source",
in this sense.

(My apologies if you already know this).

Dave.

Languages Group Manager.
Harlequin Ltd., Lismore House, 127 George St, Edinburgh, EH2 4JN, UK.
Tel: +44 131 240 6106.

Re: licence issues

[Sven LUTHER]

On Tue, Apr 20, 1999 at 10:24:52AM +0100, Dave Berry wrote:
> At 19:53 19/04/99 +0200, Pierre Weis wrote:
> >You are right, but you know, nowadays, it's a kind of a religious war:
> >you must have been baptized under the GPL to be declared a ``free''
> >man (sorry, I meant software).
> 
> I find the most useful definition is not "free software", but "Open Source
> software".  This has a broader definition than just GNU.  If you look at

which is just the debian free software guidelines (DFSG) from where it
originated, look also at :

http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines

(Another case where proper credit is not always given to the right persons ...)
	
Friendly,

Sven LUTHER

Re: licence issues

[Dave Berry]

At 08:43 22/04/99 +0200, Sven LUTHER wrote:
>> I find the most useful definition is not "free software", but "Open Source
>> software".  This has a broader definition than just GNU.  If you look at
>
>which is just the debian free software guidelines (DFSG) from where it
>originated, look also at :
>
>(Another case where proper credit is not always given to the right persons
...)

This is getting off-topic, but in this case it looks like credit has been
given.  Check the Change History and notice at the bottom of the Open
Source Definition.

Dave.

Languages Group Manager.
Harlequin Ltd., Lismore House, 127 George St, Edinburgh, EH2 4JN, UK.
Tel: +44 131 240 6106.

Re: licence issues

[Sven LUTHER]

On Mon, Apr 19, 1999 at 07:53:18PM +0200, Pierre Weis wrote:
> > On Fri, 16 Apr 1999, Markus Mottl wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > 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.
> > 
> > I've heard this question asked too by other "open source" advocates, and 
> > I'd also be interested in the answer. As Markus notes, it would be a 
> > real pity if confusion over the licensing issue precludes greater use of
> > this outstanding tool.
> 
> So, if your licence is the GPL you belong to the free software (upper)
> class, otherwise you're not free and thus you are suspected of something
> (may be you plan to try to exploit somebody somewhere ?), at least it
> is true that you can be suspected to suspect the GPL as not being
> ``the licence''!

That is not true, there are a lot of licenses that are not GPl, but are
considered free licenses, the BSD one, the Artistic one, even the Netscape one,
...

> 
> Let me state a few points about the ``freeness'' and ``openness'' of
> Objective Caml, without the above axioms in mind.
> 
> If this licence is not suitable to somebody, I suppose that the
> following clause is the problem: you cannot redistribute binaries
> built from modified sources of the compiler. In fact, except the one
> discussed below, I don't see any strong reason to bypass the
> application of this clause, except if ``somebody'' wants to distribute
> our compiler or part of our compiler, without clearly mentioning that
> ``somebody'''s software is based on Objective Caml.  This would be a
> problem if these modified sources are redistributed as if they were
> those of the original compiler (for bug reports for instance), or
> evidently if no mention of the original sources are made. That's
> exactly to avoid these kind of unfair behaviours that this clause has
> been added to the copyright.

Yes, this is the major problem, there are two problems involved here, at least
to my understanding :

First, you do not wish to receive bug reports or bad publicity for works based
on Objective Caml. This could be solved by a clear mention of the fact that any
bugreport should be sent to the author of the modified work and not the ocaml
team. Also you could just ignore such bugreports.

Second, there is the question of credit given to the ocaml team for doing the
work. One solution to such thing is to do something like the advertising clause
of the BSD license (i know RMS think it is evil, but still it is free, at least
in the debian sense of it)

Still not being allowed to distribute binaries of work based on ocaml is almost
like not being allowed to distribute them, at least today, where there are
wider acceptance of free software, and not every who use free software has the
technical capacity to compile stuff from source. I know, such person would
surely not use ocaml as developping environment, but surely they would want to
use the ocaml VM to execute bytecode produced by other peoples, or to execute
ocaml applets in a netscape plugin, or something such.

So the solution to this two problem would be to clearly label the fact that the
modified work is a modified work, based on ocaml, but that it is distinct from
ocaml, maybe forcing a change in the name or something such.

You would want this fact to appear both in the source (but the current clean
source + patches is ok for now) and in the binaries. Perhaps mentioned in a
greeting message at the launch of the compiler, or in the about box, or
something such.

I understand that this could be difficult if you use the virtual machine,
because you don't forcibly want some message to appear each time you launch an
application, which could not produce any text output, but still if you feel you
need it, you could do it.

Also i guess a clause forcing peoples to inform you when they do a modified
work of ocaml should be ok, but i am not sure about this.

The other problem, is that there could be a risk of some other guys taking over
the ocaml source, and doing their own product with it, maybe replacing the
official ocaml because they have more manpower, ressource, ...

This is i think the true problem, isn't it ? And it has happened in the free
software world (see the gcc-egcs saga). But still maybe the source+patches only
approach could hinder this kind of thing.

The other problem is that you don't want commercial use of ocaml without the
company doing it to enter some contract with the INRIA, and here i fear there
is nothing preventing it, if you go to a true free license. But still you have
to think that you are the only one that truly understands the indeeps of ocaml,
and taking an agreement with you would maybe be easier than getting all the
information from the code directly. Also you have to weigh the fact that a more
widespread ocaml would attract more commercial partnership that a less
widespread one.

And remember, at this date, there is no truly free and good working java
implementation for Linux, so there could be something to do here.

Friendly,

Sven LUTHER