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 KAA23608; Mon, 6 Oct 2003 10:52:40 +0200 (MET DST) 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 KAA10585 for ; Mon, 6 Oct 2003 10:52:39 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from pauillac.inria.fr (pauillac.inria.fr [128.93.11.35]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h968qX104096; Mon, 6 Oct 2003 10:52:34 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from xleroy@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id KAA11425; Mon, 6 Oct 2003 10:52:33 +0200 (MET DST) Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2003 10:52:33 +0200 From: Xavier Leroy To: Marc Santoro Cc: caml-list@inria.fr, luther@debian.org Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Copyright Clarifications Message-ID: <20031006105233.B7201@pauillac.inria.fr> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 1.0i In-Reply-To: ; from msantoro@pobox.com on Sun, Oct 05, 2003 at 04:13:13PM -0500 X-Loop: caml-list@inria.fr X-Spam: no; 0.00; caml-list:01 bignum:01 ocaml's:01 bignum:01 gmp:01 low-level:01 gmp:01 api:01 mlgmp:01 numerix:01 show-stopper:01 ocaml:01 caml:01 caml:01 arithmetic:01 Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk > [Licensing conditions for the "bignum" library used by OCaml's "num" > library] You're correct that these conditions are a bit of a problem. The license you quote is that from the original BigNum distribution in the late 80's, although the code OCaml uses was later improved at INRIA. As you noticed, the BigNum code is copyright Digital and INRIA. If it were just for INRIA, that code would have been put under a standard open source license a long time ago. The problem is on the Digital side: there have been a long chain of events (Digital PRL lab closed; Digital acquired by Compaq; Compaq acquired by HP) that makes it nearly impossible to deal with the copyright holders. There are several ways to address this problem, such as replacing BigNum by GMP (the low-level functions of GMP match very closely BigNum's API), but this will take a while. In the meantime, users who are concerned about a potential licensing problem for a commercial application can also consider other Caml arbitrary-precision arithmetic libraries, such as MLGMP and Numerix (see the Hump, section "Mathematics", at caml.inria.fr). Feel free to contact us (caml@inria.fr) directly if this licensing issue is a real show-stopper for your application. - Xavier Leroy ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners