Re: [Caml-list] License Conditions for OCaml

[Sven <luther@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr>]

On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 07:22:39PM +0100, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> John,
> 
> Thank you for your feedback -- it's very interesting to hear from an
> industrial user who got the opinions of competent lawyers.
> 
> Let me just state again what we'd like to achieve concerning the
> licensing of the OCaml runtime and libraries:
> 
> 1- Users can link with it, statically or dynamically, without any
>    restrictions on the final program.
> 2- Users can modify the runtime or the libraries themselves, but then
>    must make their modifications public under the same conditions as
>    the original source.
> 3- The license should be standard, OSI-approved, and well known to the
>    public that cares about these things.
> 
> All three items are easy to justify: for 1, we don't want to bother
> anyone who uses OCaml; for 2, we'd like OCaml to remain open
> source, meaning that everyone should be able to benefit from the
> modifications on OCaml itself that someone did; and for 3, we're not
> competent for inventing yet another license and get it recognized as
> open source compliant.

Well, a 4th way would be to take the technical steps which would allow the
current licence to fullfill the 2 first requirements. Also i think it will be
very welcome for other purposes also ...

Also please consider all the implications before going ahead with it ...

> Now the problem is that apparently there is no existing license that
> matches these three criteria.  The LGPL was chosen before we realized
> all its implications w.r.t. static linking.  But popular licenses such
> as BSD or X don't meet criterion 2.  Our current hope is that the LGPL

Well, it is the silly requirement that guarantee's criterion 2, under other
things.

I have to go now, maybe we ca nfollow up on this discution at a later time ?

Friendly,

Sven Luther
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