Re: [Caml-list] License Conditions for OCaml

[Xavier Leroy <xleroy@pauillac.inria.fr>]

> Yeah, this is a slightly misleading statement, unless the OCaml
> development team has made a modification to the LGPL similar to what was
> done for the Guile license, which is LGPL with one additional clause:
> blanket linking is allowed for Guile. (OCaml dev team, is this also the
> license under which the runtime exists?)

We haven't yet modified the LGPL to remove these silly restrictions on
linking with LGPL code, but plan to do so in the near future.  

We'd be interested in examples of other software projects that did this.
You mention Guile, however it seems to be under the (standard) GPL
(not even LGPL).

> If you read the license, how it works is that if you link *dynamically*
> with LGPLed libraries, there are no restrictions on the license of the
> linking program.  That means you have to have a shared library version.
> If you have a statically linked program, or on some system that doesn't
> support shared libraries/DLL's, you are going to be in violation of the
> lesser GPL by linking to the static versions of the library.

Not at all.  In case of static linking, the LGPL requires that you
give users the ability to re-link your program with modified versions
of the LGPL-ed library.  In practice, this means that you have to
provide the .cmo or .cmx/.o files for your OCaml program in the
unlikely event that someone asks for them (in order to exercise
his/her LGPL rights of re-linking with modified Caml libraries).

No big deal, really, but still silly.

- Xavier Leroy
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