Re: [Caml-list] ocaml compiler license

[Adrien Nader <adrien@notk.org>]

On Thu, Mar 05, 2015, Milan Stanojević wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 5, 2015 at 6:28 PM, Fabrice Le Fessant
> <Fabrice.Le_fessant@inria.fr> wrote:
> > From the QPL 1.0 license in OCaml sources:
> >
> > "... distribute your modifications, in a form that is separate from
> > the Software, such as patches."
> >
> > In GIT, the software itself is a set of patches, so it's not so clear
> > for me that if the modifications are another set of patches, there are
> > in a "separate form".
> 
> I thought that the intent was to make sure that modified software
> can't be mistaken for original one, hence "separate form".
> 
> But, reading here
> https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html
> 
> "Q Public License (QPL), Version 1.0 (#QPL)
> 
> This is a non-copyleft free software license which is incompatible
> with the GNU GPL. It also causes major practical inconvenience,
> because modified sources can only be distributed as patches."
> 
> This seems like a much stronger reading.
> 
> Maybe INRIA is willing to amend the license to explicitly allow any
> form of redistribution, not only patches.

GNU is a bit biaised here and the "license-list" page is short and
(mostly) to the point: it covers a large number of licenses and doesn't
use many words for each to keep the length sane.

It's not the first time this question has been raised so maybe it would
be worth adding a sentence about that.
(that said I'm under the impression that you can't change the wording of
the QPL by copyright but I can't check that since the trolltech website
seems down and I don't have time to search for a copy of the license
elsewhere).

-- 
Adrien Nader