Re: [Caml-list] GPL with linking exception?

[Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@upsilon.cc>]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 11:05:05PM +0100, Guillaume Yziquel wrote:
> >Uh? Why "therefore"?
> Because I was indeed thinking of -custom when talking about
> "executable"...

OK, but notice that -custom has been deprecated for a while now. Also,
it is not clear to me which benefit do you gain in distributing your
stuff that way: you lose portability (which is the main benefit of
bytecode) and you have slower code than native code. (Of course, it
might be that you don't have a native code compiler for your target arch
...)

> >If you just distribute the bytecode (no -custom compilation involved),
> >you will be not distributing the OCaml runtime with it, just your own
> >program compiled to bytecode.
> 
> Is it the only issue with the GPL? If that's the only issue, then
> it's perfectly fine with me...

IANAL, but anyhow no, it is not the only issue with the GPL, but this
issue is a more generic one. It boils down to what you distribute: if
you distribute only stuff written by you, you can choose the license, if
you distribute also stuff written by someone else (the bytecode compiler
in this case), than you have to care about runtime compatibility. Of
course the fact that you can choose the license does not imply that you
can actually run it against the bytecode interpreter, but AFAICT this is
not a problem that the GPL will induce.

Obviously, GPL-ed bytecode means that the source of the bytecode most go
along with it.

Cheers.

-- 
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
zack@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -<>- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
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