Re: OCaml's Cathedral & Bazaar (was Re: [Caml-list] Completeness of "Unix" run-time library)

[Richard Jones <rich@annexia.org>]

I broadly agree with Matt's analysis of the situation.  Here are some
observations of my own.

(1) Perl gets along quite nicely with a loosely defined and broadly
distributed standard library.  However what Perl has which OCaml does
not is a central repository (CPAN) where you can find all those
libraries.  I don't just mean find pointers to the libraries (the
Humps), but I mean a place where you can get the actual source.

The need for a CPAN for OCaml has been extensively discussed on this
list already, so I won't go into that much further, except to say that
my company would be prepared to fund a [virtual] server and put a
little time into developing this repository.

(2) The QPL license for the compiler itself is a Problem.  I'm
interested to know why the compiler isn't licensed under the GPL, or,
if the commercial interests are so great, under a dual GPL-and-
commercial license similar to (I think) Qt on Unix.

If OCaml was licensed under the GPL then we could consider setting up
a public CVS to create experimental versions of the compiler.  I'd
like to see a load of things going in - GCaml, regexps, ## for single
line comments, # operator for module types, fix for printf FAQ bug,
custom printf operator, ...

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones. http://www.annexia.org/ http://www.j-london.com/
Merjis Ltd. http://www.merjis.com/ - improving website return on investment
"One serious obstacle to the adoption of good programming languages is
the notion that everything has to be sacrificed for speed. In computer
languages as in life, speed kills." -- Mike Vanier

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