Re: licence issues

[Brian Rogoff <bpr@best.com>]

On Tue, 20 Apr 1999, Xavier Leroy wrote:
> ... snip ...
> 
> I wish open-source "ayatollahs" (as I called them before) could
> think about these issues rather than just bullying everything that
> is not GPL.  (The latter takes a lot less thinking, of course.)

I don't think the name calling is deserved. "Open source" is not the same
as GPL. The person who asked me about OCaml prefers public domain, not
GPL, and is hardly an "ayatollah". 

Since we are inventing hypothetical scenarios, try this one: INRIA stops
funding the Caml project, for whatever reason. OCaml users are left
"orphaned", as it is not clear who takes over, and begin the switch to 
SML and Haskell, or, much worse, C++, Perl, and Visual basic ;-). As a 
former Amiga and NextStep user, fear of being orphaned is a concern.

I think the trick is to find a way to satisfy the valid concerns of the 
OCaml developers and the trepidations of some users. Perhaps if there were 
another version of OCaml (like the Bigloo based Caml Light) under the GPL 
or a similar license these concerns would be lessened.

-- Brian