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 MAA19095; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 12:01:23 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id MAA19091 for ; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 12:01:22 +0100 (MET) Received: from gatekeeper.ph.inter.net (ip3.ph.psi.net [203.176.75.3] (may be forged)) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id fARB1K123499 for ; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 12:01:21 +0100 (MET) Received: from dido.engr.internet.org.ph (unknown [203.176.75.250]) by gatekeeper.ph.inter.net (Postfix) with SMTP id 6709743D2E for ; Tue, 27 Nov 2001 19:01:09 +0800 (PHT) Received: by dido.engr.internet.org.ph (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Tue, 27 Nov 2001 19:00:04 +0800 Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 18:58:58 +0800 From: "Rafael 'Dido' Sevilla" To: Fergus Henderson Subject: Re: [Caml-list] License Conditions for OCaml Message-ID: <20011127185858.A29671@team.ph.inter.net> References: <20011127032158.C10358@earth.cs.mu.oz.au> <20011126113627.G92700-100000@fledge.watson.org> <20011127212859.A25966@hg.cs.mu.oz.au> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <20011127212859.A25966@hg.cs.mu.oz.au>; from fjh@cs.mu.OZ.AU on Tue, Nov 27, 2001 at 09:28:59PM +1100 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Tue, Nov 27, 2001 at 09:28:59PM +1100, Fergus Henderson wrote: > On 26-Nov-2001, Patrick M Doane wrote: > > ... it's a lot less work to change the license ... > > Well, maybe, maybe not... > you might be surprised at how difficult that often is ;-) Especially if not all the code is really yours. I believe that's the case with OCaml. There have been whispers here and there that the OCaml regular expression code contains code taken from a LGPLed regex library, whose copyright is owned by the Free Software Foundation. THEY definitely are not going to agree with any sort of change away from the (L)GPL, and will not look kindly on any violation. The sort of code sharing we usually see is encouraged, and very few projects of any great magnitude can say that their code is completely written by them. It isn't true of Linux (there's a lot of code 'stolen' from BSD in there) and that certainly isn't true of the OCaml runtime and libraries. And even if you owned all the code and decided to change its license, especially to something less liberal than the GPL, people who don't like it can just take your old GPLed version and use THAT instead and hack on THAT instead. Like what happened with Sistina and GFS. Changing licenses of a major project, especially one that has been a community effort is not something that can be done without the aid of a lawyer experienced in the entanglements of copyright law... -- Rafael R. Sevilla +63(2) 8177746 ext. 8311 Programmer, Inter.Net Philippines +63(917) 4458925 http://dido.engr.internet.org.ph/ OpenPGP Key ID: 0x5CDA17D8 Heute die Welt und Morgen das Sonnensystem! ------------------- 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