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( [70.133.175.106]) by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id 18sm1889742wry.17.2008.01.30.10.23.48 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5); Wed, 30 Jan 2008 10:23:49 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <47A0C0B2.1010101@gmail.com> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:23:46 -0600 From: Edgar Friendly User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (X11/20071022) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jon Harrop Cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Relicensing OCaml References: <200801301326.04506.jon@ffconsultancy.com> In-Reply-To: <200801301326.04506.jon@ffconsultancy.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 47A0C0BA.000 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; ocaml:01 redistribute:01 ocaml:01 lgpl:01 ocaml's:01 stdlib:01 compiler:01 syntax:01 toplevel:01 ocaml's:01 compiler:01 stdlib:01 inria's:01 camlp:01 edgar:98 Jon Harrop wrote: > I just ploughed through the CAML Consortium legal document to find out what a > consortium member can do and was quite surprised to find (p. 13) that they > are able to redistribute under any license of their choosing. > > So any of the Consortium members can simply republish the core OCaml > distribution under LGPL, BSD or whatever and then we can get on with > improving it and not having to worry about patches and backward > compatibility... :-) > I recall reading a discussion where Xavier(?) admitted that yes, a consortium member *could* do this, but their membership in the consortium would expire after a year and they would not get the chance to renew. Imagine a future where INRIA releases nothing further OCaml-related and drops all support for it. The community *might* continue OCaml's existence. We'll increase the size and scope of the stdlib without problem. We'll include simple changes to the compiler like try..finally syntax. We'll give the toplevel line-editing capabilities. But will the community implement dynamic loading of native code? How long will it take the community to build an ARM port? Ask yourself where 99% of the knowledge of OCaml's internals lies. Ask yourself who can best find and fix corner-case bugs in the type system. INRIA has to maintain copyright on something whole and usable to keep the Consortium going. If Community-OCaml changes the compiler or stdlib, Consortium members won't have the same rights to those improvements as they do to INRIA's code. The easy solution seems to be giving copyright of contributed code to INRIA so they stay in complete control over the compiler. Even if people would do this, INRIA seems unwilling to test French copyright law on this matter, so we're stuck there. I know that Xavier has "given an inch" in at least verbally allowing a Community distribution of OCaml that can include additional libraries and camlp4 filters. Please don't try to "take a mile" and insist that everything get opened up to community development right now. Let's get Community-OCaml up and running and see where things go after a release or two of that. E