From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id UAA26751; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 20:19:17 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA26747 for ; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 20:19:16 +0100 (MET) Received: from e1.ny.us.ibm.com (e1.ny.us.ibm.com [32.97.182.101]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id fARJJAP13247 for ; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 20:19:10 +0100 (MET) Received: from northrelay02.pok.ibm.com (northrelay02.pok.ibm.com [9.117.200.22]) by e1.ny.us.ibm.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id OAA381210 for ; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 14:16:26 -0500 Received: from d01ml243.pok.ibm.com (d01ml243.pok.ibm.com [9.117.200.72]) by northrelay02.pok.ibm.com (8.11.1m3/NCO v5.01) with ESMTP id fARJJ7j67092 for ; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 14:19:07 -0500 Importance: Normal To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: Re: [Caml-list] License Conditions for OCaml X-Mailer: Lotus Notes Release 5.0.3 (Intl) 21 March 2000 From: "John Field" Message-ID: Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 14:10:12 -0500 X-MIMETrack: Serialize by Router on D01ML243/01/M/IBM(Build V509_11062001 |November 6, 2001) at 11/27/2001 02:19:06 PM, Serialize complete at 11/27/2001 02:19:06 PM MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Our group at IBM recently used OCaml to implement a compiler-like utility for migration of database applications (part of a larger suite of tools available for free download at http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/db2/migration/mtk/). I thought our experiences might be relevant to the discussion about OCaml licensing conditions. IBM's lawyers have lots of experience dissecting the innards of various open- and quasi-open source licenses. They are _very_ wary of the LGPL. I won't attempt to explain or justify all of their concerns, some of which I don't fully understand. However, their principal objections were to the clauses of the LGPL allowing "reverse engineering" of and "modifications" to the code. The lawyers realize that the _intent_ of these clauses is probably benign. However, the license provisions are so ambiguously worded (as ample discussion on this list has demonstrated) that the requirements it imposes on an implementer and the rights it grants to a user are very unclear. In addition to the legal ambiguities, the provision requiring that the code be distributed in a way that allows re-linking of the libraries is a major administrative hassle (e.g., does IBM have to redistribute the MS linker if someone decides they want to relink the application? Do they have to get a license from MS to do this?...) As a result of the issues above, IBM's general response to applications that use LGPL libraries is to require that the libraries be dynamically-linked. Since this wasn't feasible with OCaml, we had to distribute the application in bytecode, rather than opt-compiled form. This resulted in a significant (but acceptable) loss of performance that we would have preferred to avoid. It is certainly possible that the IBM lawyers are being unnecessarily cautious, but since they are the gatekeepers for getting applications out the door, their perceptions become reality. If the OCaml developers don't feel that the relinking provisions of LGPL are important, I would strongly advise adopting an alternative license that unambiguously allows static linking of OCaml libraries without imposing any additional requirements on the application. -John John Field IBM T.J. Watson Research Center http://www.research.ibm.com/people/j/jfield ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr